Can The Solution To Spam Be Hoax Spam?
from the creative...-but... dept
Kevin Stapp points us to a proposal by Glyn Moody that one way to tackle the spam problem is to have the government send out more spam itself. Yes, it sounds crazy at first, but there's more to the plan. The basic idea is that the sort of folks who fall for spam are likely to click on the links found in this "fake" spam as well -- and we'd then use that as an opportunity to "educate" those poor deluded fools to stop clicking on spam links or responding to spam emails. The good thing about this plan is that it's one of the very, very few anti-spam ideas out there that actually focuses on the real problem: that spam works. There are still people out there who respond to spam. Where it gets more questionable, though, is in figuring out whether or not this plan would work. The people who regularly fall for spam don't seem all that likely to "learn" from such actions. While a few might, I'd guess that most won't -- and the additional burden on email networks hardly seems worth it to convert a few clueless emailers over to the bright side.
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Fine them
Better than the lottery, because it will only hit those wealthy enough to own computers and have internet access, plus people will take notice and learn when they get fined. Some of them anyway.
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Re: Fine them (entrapment)
It is a good way to educate people, and if you really think there is a need to have some sort of negative reinforcement then they could always redirect them to some sort of rick-rolled site.
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Re: Re: Fine them (entrapment)
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Re: Re: Fine them (entrapment)
Hopefully kept up to date.
Maybe someone can florish this idea?
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Re: Fine them
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Re: Re: Fine them
Read the comment as he clearly intended, you arrogant pimple.
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Re: Fine them
I do like the idea of a tax on people that click on spam. I get a $100 ticket for taking a U-turn in the middle of the night with no one around except me and a cop with his lights off hiding. why do these idiots punish us all with promoting spam.
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the biggest problem is...
Moreover, it is quite hard to systematically tell the difference between spam and mass e-mails, most people can't tell the difference and report it all as spam anyway.
I like the idea, it sounds cool, but in practice -- thumbs down.
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I like this idea
I don't think this needs any government intervention at all. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly willing to do this themselves for free. I'd do it but I'd bet Comcast, Yahoo, or Google would probably cancel my account for it.
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Re: I like this idea
Don't laugh, it has happened to some of the savviest users.
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So I NEVER see spam, so normally I wouldn't care. Except for I do see my pay check, and I see the taxes taken from it, and I don't think I want the government taking that money to make more spam.
I could see the government making it illegal to filter their spam as it would be educational in nature. It would suck getting spam again.
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eh
I don't think this will work well. It seems to be a cop out instead of solving the real problem.
To solve it, stop the revenue flow. Money has to be sent somehow for the majority of spam to accomplish its purpose. A government team just needs to find the routing, paypal, credit card processing, etc account and break that link.
If the stupid users can't pay for the service, then the spammers won't spam. Legit services that use spammers- fine them. If Tyson can't use illegal immigrants in their chicken houses, then CompanyXYZ shouldn't be allowed to employ spammers.
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Don't want to see it - in any form
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So you want to increase spam to slow spam...
People that are dumber than a box of stupid (or a bag of hammers) will not change, even when acted upon by an outside rod of intelligence. These people have a high saving throw against intelligence and they ALWAYS make that saving throw.
The horrible part to this whole thing? The spammers in this country have the right to spam. Yes, you heard me right (so feel free to flame me - you have that right as well)! Spammers have the right to spam. I loathe them as much as the next guy, and would cheerfully commit felonies upon their person given the chance. I unfortunately also have to defend their right to be asshats - just as I defend the peacenick's and hippie's rights to be idiots.
Spam filers that actually work are becoming easier to get. Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage both have refined filters that get most of the spam out of my inbox. The new Windows Mail in Windows 7 seems to filter it fairly well, although I haven't had a long time to test it like the others.
Ok, all you peacenicks, hippies, and whiners out there - FLAME ON!
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I have an idea
The problem is that there aren't enough life-threatening situations to weed out the less-than-smart.
We need to find a way to remove stupid people from the gene pool
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You can't fix stupid.
"
As soon as you make something idiot proof someone goes and invents a better idiot.
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HOW ABOUT....
Hopefully kept up to date.
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hmm
Since they won't learn the easy way, let's let them learn the hard way. After reformatting every time they click an email link, they'll eventually learn - or just stay off the internet.
Either way, win win.
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spam is a business
why not flood the market with counterfeit spam lists?
a counterfeit list is a list of valid email addresses that accept email but then delete it.
mailinator.com is a good example. mailinator accepts all email, holds it for a few days, and then deletes it. you can use any username you want, and the username becomes the key to retrieve any messages that are stored, like so:
techdirtfan@mailinator.com
if you go to mailinator.com and enter "techdirtfan"
people hire spammers to do campaigns and spammers rent, buy, or trade lists to run these campaigns. people pay for the lists and services because they promise results.
if those lists are contaminated with counterfeit addresses, it costs more to deliver the same results.
put the counterfeit addresses online, then the harvesters and spiders will pick up the counterfeit addresses and dilute the lists of "real" addresses.
also, sell cheap lists of the counterfeit addresses so the street price of a spam list drops below a manageable level.
past the spam problem is the "lead aggregation" problem, where people get suckered into filling out forms in exchange for something.
why not set up a collection of bots to fill out these forms? if they are filled junk information it becomes harder to convert those leads into sales.
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Won't work
There was a method being bandied about a few years back that would "sign" emails to show they were real, but it seems to have dropped off the map. Perhaps the spammers found a way to get by it and it's no longer viable.
Any way you go, spam is here to stay. Best thing to do it get a better filter and use discretion when reading emails. You can't fix stupid, but you can avoid being stupid in the first place.
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Re: Won't work
Amen.
You could not have said it better.
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Admittedly Clueless
Now, I must admit to my own ignorance as to all the ways an email address can be spoofed. I have read up on a few, and it seems those are actually preventable by whoever runs the domain of the spoofed addy. I can only assume that there are plenty of other ways to go about it, but it seems like somebody (smarter than me) should have figured out a way to reliably authenticate email by now. And once that is in place, something similar to the "no call" lists we have to prevent telemarketers from calling should be done with email. Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't any (more?) internet providers, or even just email providers, lobbying for laws to be put into place so they can go after anyone clogging up their servers with spam and devaluing the service they provide. The first such provider who could guarantee that anyone sending their customers spam would be fined or imprisoned would have half the population switching over to them in a week. Of course, the next trick they'd have to pull would be luring the spammers who don't live in the US onto our soil...
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Actually, I think y'all missed an even worse problem
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So pitifully misguided and appallingly stupid
Moreover, the proper (and only correct) definition of spam in the context of email is "unsolicited bulk email". Note that this definition -- which predates the term "spam" itself -- does not mention content of motivation. So-called "educational spam" is thus no different -- in terms of whether it's UBE or not -- than make-money-fast spam or 419 spam or porn spam or blank spam. So what's really being advocated here isn't a fix for spam: it's spam.
Finally, the pitiful moron behind this idea has apparently not been paying attention for the past 30 years or so as attempts have been made to educate users on basic methods for dealing with abusive email, such as "do not forward chain letters" and "NEVER reply to spam". Those attempts have almost entirely failed. There is absolutely no reason to make another one, as it will most certainly fail just as badly. As Marcus Ranum wrote, referring to the non-solution of user education, "If it was going to work, it would have worked by now." But this is what you get when ignorant newbies show up and announce that they have conceived the "solution" to spam, even though it's obvious that they have almost no grasp of the problem -- and sometimes cannot even recite the correct definition. This is how we got the utterly worthless garbage called SPF ("Spam as a technical problem is solved by SPF"), this is how we got abusive techniques like challenge-response and callbacks, this is how we got BlueFrog, and now, apparently, this is how we've got another idiot flogging his dead-on-arrival idea to anyone gullible enough to buy into it.
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A way to make this work
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3 strikes
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Won't work
Um, if people don't take notice after their identity has been stolen, their bank accounts drained, and their computer hacked, how would an "education" site help them?
And even if they went to the education site and read about why they shouldn't click on links, would they remember it when the latest scammer says they won a million dollars in a UK lottery?
Second, how do these "educational" e-mails get past all the spam-fighters? Will filters block these e-mails? Will users report them to SpamCop and other black lists, thinking they're real spam e-mails? And what happens if the educational e-mails get put on black lists and get blocked? Oops, no more anti-spam e-mails.
The better idea is to have a licensing procedure for owning a computer. You need a license to drive a car and the only risk is that you'll get into an accident. If you click on the wrong link and infect your computer, you could turn your PC in a zombie and send out billions of e-mails, wasting bandwidth and untold amounts of time and productivity.
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Re: Won't work
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Government spam
However, a moderate program by the government could be a good thing - and "flooding" the system? Sure, if we assume the idea requires we "peg" on an extreme! Otherwise, no.
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