Reading null's journal

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.

"God is dead." - Nietzsche, 1882 "Nietzsche is dead." - God, 1900

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.

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.

"God is dead." - Nietzsche, 1882 "Nietzsche is dead." - God, 1900