* Reader suggestions on fighting spam
A few weeks ago, I raised the issue of whether legislation like the one recently passed in California is enough to stop spammers in their tracks. You responded with a resounding “No.”
“Some people use spam to do good and some to do bad,” says a reader from Oregon. “But the point is that we rely on its power to accomplish what we have set out to do. When we convey a meaning, sometimes we use a form of spam to get the point across; intentionally or not, all of us spam. How can this be regulated? I don’t think governments have much of an upper hand here.”
“You’re right about some people actually thinking what they are doing is okay until someone tells them it’s not,” says a reader from Australia. “I don’t imagine there are too many people that go around thinking they are going to do something bad, although others may see their acts quite differently.”
He points to the ISPs as a possible solution to the problem. “ISPs have been slow to respond to spam distributors even though the spam content is typically earmarked as any virus with detectable content and attribute signatures. There are often times where unsubscribe requests are not actioned, either because the request is ignored, overruled or simply cannot be made because the spam e-mail does not provide an unsubscribe link.
“As the customer of an ISP I expect that if I cannot unsubscribe from a list I should have recourse through my ISP. And they should have the means to locate the ISP source of the spam and request action to cease the distribution. Should this action not occur within a reasonable timeframe my ISP should take action to refuse carriage to the identified spam source.
“Another way to help ISPs manage unsolicited e-mail is to regulate for having advisories on the e-mails to help identify them as legitimate and meeting certain unsolicited e-mail regulations. This is similar to the concept of content advisories on Web sites that filtering software use to protect minors from unsuitable content. Taking the real-world parallel, in Australia recipient post boxes at your house or office are generally divided into personal mail (non-advertising) and junk-mail slots. I see no reason why e-mails cannot be tagged in the same manner to ease management of inbound ‘junk-mail.’ I believe this approach combined with a tougher stance from ISPs on non-regulated spam e-mails, and the education and government regulation strategies, would assist in the decline of problem spam e-mails.
“One cannot hope the spammers will get the message passively, one can only hope that we collectively are proactive enough to fix the flaws in the system.”
A reader logging on from Colorado says the solutions to spam are rooted in world history. “The issue of spam brings up the issue of incoming packet control,” he says. “We might take a clue from the Victorian era when you could not contact another person in polite society unless you had a formal introduction from a mutual friend. This may become the way network computing is handled in the future. If you want to contact me, you need a personal introduction. That personal introduction would allow your name to be placed in my permitted list of correspondents. Then I could receive your e-mail.”
A clever suggestion comes from a reader in Alberta, Canada, who says to follow the money. “Go after the credit card companies that host and allow their services to be used by spammers,” he says.
His idea (paraphrased): If a person gets an e-mail to buy something online and it says to pay by credit card, forward the e-mail to an address set up by the government to snag spammers. They capture the info, contact the credit card company and find out who gets the money if someone offers their credit card information for the product. Then the government should tell the credit card company if they continue to support spammers, they will be fined per complaint.
“I am sure [the credit card company] would quickly set up new rules and weed out the spammers overnight,” he adds. “So much easier than bothering to track [the spammers] down and prosecute. “
What do you think? Is this spam problem curable via legislation? Let me know at sgittlen@nww.com
