SPAM
SPAM. THE VERY THOUGHT RAISES MY BLOOD PRESSURE.
Spam- note first letter capitalized, an act of respect to someone or something. A DELICIOUS lunchon meat from Hormell.
NOT what we are talking about.
'spam'- notice NO capitalization, indication NO respect of significance- AKA 'junkmail' in your Emailbox. THAT is the subject of the diatribe.
Cantonical story of the name comes from the Monty Python skit with the singing vikings going on and on and on and on and on... about Definiition #1, Spam. The idea is there's just so much of it, you get sick of hearing it, seeing it, experiencing it. An endless torrent, a tidalwave you MUST swallow, endlessly.
If junkmail was infrequent, tasteful, even amusing, maybe it would not be so bad. But there is this HUGE unending flood of spam in all our Emailboxes, and it's costing us BIG.
Did you know that at least 2/3 of my email is spam? Now, when a firm sends out junk mail in the POSTAL SERVICE, the entire cost of delivery is paid by the sender. When the idiot sends SPAM, the cost of transmission, reception, and storage is paid for by- whoever got stuck with it. Me. you. That backbone firm with the fatpipe linking 2000 little sites. The phone company. EVERYBODY EXCEPT the sender. It is a form of distributed theft!
Now, were it the occasional piece, this would be a nusance, and we can usually accept nusancds and cranks in the name of freedom. BUT WHEN IT IS 2/3 OF THE WORKLOAD?!?
Email which you agreed to accept prior to first reception is not spam. You joined a list knowingly, and they are sending you advertisements you agree to receive. It's not my place to tell you what you can read, nor anyone else's. When you go and sign up for something, and suddenly (or gradually, for that matter) are getting things you never thought you were signing up for, that's spam.
Such a person lied to you. They did something they never told you they would do, or sold your address, or stuck you on a list they themselves host IN ADDITION to the one you wanted, or use the list you joined in ways they never represented.
There's the first principle to make things spam; dishonesty.
Many (although not ALL) spam operations make it hard to unsubscribe. unsubscribe links do not work, or seem to work, but simply place your email on a seperate list of CONFIRMED addresses (they sell for much more on the market!). There again is the dishonesty principle hard at 'work', to insult the word a bit.
Another common trait is they knowingly violate the terms of acceptable use, a contractual term of a service provider. The account get's closed within hours of the first spam run, but the stuff is gone out already. Knowing and premeditated fraudulent violation of contractual terms, and of the expression of dishonesty.
Another kink is to create fraudulent Received headers. Each server the message pases through adds a part to the received headers, so the path can be traqced back. Some spammers FORGE headers to attempt to misdirect blaime; often they also will forge the From: field. Another expression of dishonesty
the 'best' spam firms do NOT forge anything, DO NOT sell lists, DO NOT keep you on lists against you will, DO honor remove requests, DO honestly represent the source, DO hire hosting from firms who know what is about to happen. OK, instead of burying them alive, we just want to give them 3 licks with the American Cat o' nine tails (no bits of metal or glass in the leather strips, unlike the European version). But it's still spam. It's still distrubuited theft of service. It's still immoral, and in some places ILLEGAL. But they keep doging the law, the managers, the lawyers.
TinyList is spam resistant. ALL traffic carries a link to the membership manager for that list, and that link is ALWAYS present in the footer. Tinylist will NOT forge the headers. TinyList includes headers designed to assist filtering of list traffic. It is NOT designed to be a spam engine, does not assist spam, and in some circumstances will actively interfere with spam.
But in the end, spam is not a technology issue, it's a social issue. It's solution therefore is going to be of a social nature, not a technological one. Although someone could hack TL to pevert it into a more efficent spambot, a person THAT skilled could WRITE a spambot. They don't need me, or TL, they can write one. for them what have more time than money, there are a number of engines for the industry already out there, off the shelf, tested and perfected, which ARE INDEED engineered with spam in mind.
And they can all go rot in hell.
06
This file last modified
Thursday July 31 2003 07 08 PM
ODD#7.30.03/kdb/spam.shtml
Peace.