Lou Katz wrote:
On Sun, Apr 18, 2004 at 02:01:45PM -0400, Jerry Eyers wrote:
Spamming is pervasive mainly due to the inattention or failure to enforce acceptable use policies by the service provider.
I must point out that this statement is just flat wrong.
Spamming exists because spamming works. Why do spammers send out millions of emails? Because thousands of people click, look at, and subscribe to services and products being spewed by the spammers.
If spamming didn't sell products, spamming would die off. We must educate the users to not do anything with spam but delete it. As from the sucess of infomercials on television shows, that won't happen anytime soon.
I think you are 'right on'. I offer this observation, first triggered by a third-hand report from some sociologists:
Perhaps you'd both care to provide a methodology whereby the same fools who respond to anatomical enlargement/improvement potions could be successfully educated as to the foibles of responding to spam? All 150 million plus of them? And then perhaps compare that required effort and potential success to that of applying consistent global pressure on the 100 or so networks that host the compromised machines that are the unwitting gateways for almost all of today's spam. Unfortunately, in many cases, the networks do put enormous effort into disconnecting compromised boxes, but the numbers are overwhelming (240,000 on one network alone in the last 2 weeks). That does not appear to be good enough any more. I'm with Paul. As Steve Bellovin has so frequently bleated: "Push the responsibility to the edges, where it belongs". -- Rodney Joffe CenterGate Research Group, LLC. http://www.centergate.com "Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(R)