Reading null's journal

It's official. The signal/noise ratio of my mailbox has sunken below the minimum acceptable quality level.

For every piece of real mail I get, I also get an average of 14 pieces of spam and 8 viruses. It's been like this for several weeks, and it's steadily getting worse. Currently more than 95% of all the mails I get are junk.

It's pretty obvious that spammers will soon render email completely useless, exactly like they killed Usenet a few years ago. May their stinking guts burn in hell for all eternity.
Unless the next US government (where most spam comes from nowadays) enacts a law that introduces the death penalty for all spammers, or unless the big ISPs get their fingers out of their ass and introduce effective measures against spamming customers, email will be abandoned completely within a few years. (And I bet the spammers are ready to attack whatever new system of communication is going to replace it.)

Don't tell me that an all-new junk filter, whitelists or domain authentification system will help solve the problem. I'm pretty sure that the next generation of spam will come with your friend's name and email address on it, and the text and subject will contain references to mails you've recently sent them.

If this trend continues I'll build my own messaging system. Everybody who wants to send me a message will have to use that system. It'll include a way for me to crash your computer, take your credit card number and acquire your first born, in case you send me spam.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

They already come as a faked - or maybe even real - failure notice, telling you the mail you NEVER EVER SENT could not been forwarded to some given address.

It becomes specially suspicious when I read about messages sent from an email address of mine, which actually is a standard alias for my normal address - I DO NOT send mails from my alias, only my real one! They must have grabbed it by crawling some ISP directory like Webhostlist.de or Hostsuche.de .. assholes. May they rot in their own body juices! X-(

cu, w0lf.

ps: in last issue of iX - or was it ct (dont know for sure) - they once again talked about a nice scheme how to both stay quite anonymously and still protect your personal freedom (ie. being FREE of spam!) - Gonna search it tommorrow when I'm back and have slept out from the party Im going to right now ;)

Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign for a diseased mind!

This post was edited by ginsterbusch on Jun 09, 2004.

They already come as a faked - or maybe even real - failure notice, telling you the mail you NEVER EVER SENT could not been forwarded to some given address.

Oh, I know these. They're either attempts to get past your spam filter (failure reports aren't filtered so easily) or genuine reports in reaction to undeliverable spam/virii which had your email address in the From: field.

They must have grabbed it by crawling some ISP directory

They also like to invent addresses. Oh, the amount of spam I get to joe@mydomain, bob@mydomain, stacey@mydomain, ... altho these people and addresses never existed.

assholes. May they rot in their own body juices!

Supported!

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

enacts a law that introduces the death penalty for all spammers

Whilst the liberals are strong here, that won't happen. Now if Texas were in charge, you wouldn't have to worry about the spammers. I quote Ron White: "other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. We're [Texas] puttin' in an express lane" (referring to a piece of legislation that speeds up the death penalty process for henious crimes with more than 3 reliable witnesses)

May I pose a suggestion? I protected myself for quite some time by having two email addresses. I had 1 that was the first letter of my name and my last name for the email I give out to people and friends physically. Then I had another that consisted of my first initial and the word public and I used that email specifically for the internet (aka for signing up for board memberships etc. etc.)

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

by having two email addresses.

I must have about fifty or so. :-) Well, not real addresses, but a catch-all account for one of my domains. Everywhere I subscribe I make the company's name part of the email address I give them. That way I can tell perfectly well who's behind it if one of those addresses gets spammed.
The problem is that one of my two private addresses gets so terribly much spam. I didn't give this address to anyone I don't know. My best guess is that some greeting card company harvested the address when one of my friends used it to send me an e-card.

Now if Texas were in charge, you wouldn't have to worry about the spammers.

This solution looks good too. :-)

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

I had 1 that was the first letter of my name and my last name for the email I give out to people and friends physically.

It's only a matter of time until one nice but otherwise clueless friend of yours enters your secret address on a website to send you a funky e-card and it's so secret no longer.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

What everyone needs is a GMAIL address. I recently got into the beta program. (WINK) and its awsome...

All my junk mail goes to the jumk folder. Even those I forward from other accounts. What more all my mail space is currently at 0% and I am using 2MBs. GMAIL has 1000 MBs of space. Yes that is right 24 mb short of a gb of space!?

www.gmail.com

btw I have one invite left. Soon will have more. These invites go link gold. One guy traded me the register for 2 years of a domain i picked and a year of free webhosting on his server. For ONE INVITE. Elier, when they was even less of them, people were giving away cars for an invite, or even a apple ipod...

Wish I had it then.

My friend got a signed contract from an author to later in his life write his autobiography...

WOW! For one invite!?

Yep this service rocks.

Got a good offer and want GMAIL. Let me know I will be getting more invites soon. But they are rare....

<I am the most complex person alive to my knowledge, save me>

Elier, when they was even less of them, people were giving away cars for an invite, or even a apple ipod...

Really? I wonder why google didn't think of charging for this service.

(Or is the mined data just as valuable?)

'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman. 'Get stuffed!' the Harlequin replied, sneering.

Well they advertise relevent ads when u read the emial. So if u have a email about baseball. They might advertise a sporting store and MLB.com

Its actually scary relivent

but its only beta right now, they might charge later...

<I am the most complex person alive to my knowledge, save me>

It happened to me. I used to get ZERO spam to my account at http://planet-save.com/ till a friend of mine signed us for FREE MOVIE TICKETS!!! All I have to do to get these free tickets is sign up a friend. hah-hah-hah

Now I get dozens of spam messages a day.

You have to ask the question, "Why does spam exist?"

The answer is obvious: It's profitable.

You then have to ask the question, "Why is it profitable?"

The answer is painful: There are actually people out there who buy into these scams. People who want to enlarge their penis. People who want free movie tickets. etc etc etc.

The real solution is to eliminate these idiots that are making spam a profitable business.

My suggestion is to send out a spam message that sells a miracle pill to cure all your woes (cyanide).

But then, there are new idiots born every minute.

The answer is painful: There are actually people out there who buy into these scams.

Well observed. But as you say yourself,

there are new idiots born every minute.

So (as much as I'd like to make the Internet idiot-free) I don't think it can be done. Hence a different approach has to be taken to deal with spam.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

The answer is painful: There are actually people out there who buy into these scams. People who want to enlarge their penis. People who want free movie tickets. etc etc etc.

What I don't get: Wouldn't this evidently existing market be saturated some time? Even the dumbest idiots should eventually (perhaps after some trial and error) figure out those mails are scam, and the rest of the population isn't very likely to buy into it at the 101st time...

'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman. 'Get stuffed!' the Harlequin replied, sneering.

Wouldn't this evidently existing market be saturated some time?

Current research indicates that five people are born every second. Empirical evidence suggests that five out of ten people are morons or otherwise stupid.

These numbers make the time-honoured expression "there's a sucker born every minute" appear terribly dated. I would go so far as to claim that there's a virtually unlimited supply of penis-patch buying idiots being added to humanity's gene pool every hour.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

Yes...Kill the spammers..Roast them in a big pot and then make them eat dirt..

*Thinking hard for a minuet*...If we put them in a pot and roast them, how can they eat dirt? Maybe we should just subject them to the same frustrating process.

I seriously would love to fire parts of the goverment here as it stands right now. I love my country, but there is too much goverment and parts of it create too much restrictions in areas that don't need it and where it's needed to be in place it often has nothing there.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

I seriously would love to fire parts of the goverment here as it stands right now. I love my country, but there is too much goverment and parts of it create too much restrictions in areas that don't need it and where it's needed to be in place it often has nothing there.

As much as I love to take out the whip and verbally bash out on anything that has the slightest smell of governmental errors and mistakes, in this case blaming the government of any given nation is just useless.

Emailing, spamming respectively, is not a national problem that can be handled by national rules and restrictions. Creating laws in one country only drives them out and they are welcomed with opened arms in the next. And we're far away from any worldwide synchronized laws, probably and hopefully will never have them.

No, its a technical problem only. The email format didn't change significantly for almost 20 years. Its a relic of the computer/web stone age. What it takes is just a new header, which makes manipulation impossible, or a new approach to authorize incoming mail. But thats a joint effort of the leading companies, M$, Sun, IBM, whoever, to force that into the market. But as long as they are actively earning from spamming as well...

After decades of construction my website is finally up an running: www.kkds.de

No, its a technical problem only.

I'm not gonna start on why it's not technology's fault but a problem of the human nature only. In a perfect world we wouldn't need anti-spam measures. But let's stay realistic.
Realistically, I agree that we need a technical solution. But I wouldn't free the governments from all responsibility, because they do have effective means to fight spam.
Take the USA, f'r instance, not for bashing them but because they're an interesting case. According to recent statistics, about half of all spam worldwide originates from the USA. A few months ago Shrub has signed new spam legislation, the so-called Can-Spam Act, which states two things -
1. You may spam people as long as you give them a way to opt out of your 'mailing list' (and honor their requests), but
2. You must include a valid reply address and may not forge headers or sender addresses.

Of course it's beyond the known scope of stupidity (i.e. it takes a Bush) to actually believe that a law like this helps reduce spam - spam volume actually increased - , yet the law still helped bring quite a few spammers to justice*. Not because they spammed, which is pretty much legal now, but because they continued using forged headers and faked sender addresses, which is now illegal.
As idiotic as the Can-Spam Act is, these lawsuits demonstrate that it's feasible to track spammers down and bring them to justice*. If spammers can be tracked down and prosecuted for faking email addresses, they can also be tracked down and prosecuted for pestering millions of netizens who don't want to receive their shit. All it would take is to get rid of the can-spam legislation and outlaw everything which is not double opt-in. Even if nobody besides the USA introduced this law, half of the spam would already be illegal.
It works with junk faxes, so why shouldn't it at least have some effect on spam?

* Not real justice, as real justice would include tearing their entrails out and slowly roasting them on an open fire while they're artificially being kept conscious and forced to watch. But 'justice' in the sense that they lose money or go to jail.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid