On July 6, 2025 at 17:30 johnl@taugh.com (John Levine) wrote:

On 06-07-2025 17:05, bzs@theworld.com wrote:

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The B2B spam I get from throwaway accounts at large mail providers is probably only 1000 or less at a time since that's all you can send that way. I do not think there is one master criminal with a million throwaway Gmail accounts.

You've moved from spam to ham, no?

It's spam, bulk mail sent to people who didn't ask for it. Some offer SEO, some offer financing for my non-existent business, it's all clearly purchased lists sending mail in bulk to strangers.

I probably have a broader definition of "spam" than most which amounts to: if I'm not being paid to deliver it by the sender then it's spam.

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Do you have to show ID to drop a stamped envelope in a postal box?

Wait a minute. Stamps? Where did the stamps come from? Who issues them? Who decides if they're real? Perhaps you should reread my white paper more carefully.

You brought up IDs I was just reacting...

Beyond the fact that the underlying assumption is wrong, that's extremely unlikely to work unless you envision a world where you have to show ID and get a license to send mail.

R's, John

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At this point I get a whole lot of mail from Salesforce and Sendgrid. I would love to block them but unfortunately they also send a lot of mail my users want, so I have to do hacks that try to recognize the customer and let through the less bad ones. It is painfully clear that they have made business decisions not to spend enough money on abuse management to clean this up. The mail gets through, why should they?

Again this is what is generally called "ham" unless you want to apply it to anything you're not personally interested in.

Again, bulk mail sent to strangers. It's the normal definition of spam. I'm not talking about companies that send you ads after you order something, this is spam sent to complete strangers.

I don't disagree, I just think the tide of "ham" is rising rapidly and this reasonable-sounding definition of spam is becoming unworkable. And, I'll add, it was pretty much inevitable, tragedy of the commons and all that. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*