SPAM (was: Re: [NCLUG] Five Roses Casino!)

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2001 at 08:38:57PM +0000, dmiles wrote:
>Is anybody curious about why we're getting SPAM on this list?

When a mama marketer and a papa marketer at a shaddy company need an
audience very badly...

>The 106'th congress in 1999 passed the E-Mail User Protection Act saying
>that if we ask to not recieve SPAM, the spammer has to honor that request
>and send no more.

The problem is that there is no mandated central database of addresses
which have asked not to receive spam.  There have been a bunch of central
databases set up by various people, but last I saw there were something
like a dozen of them.

Unlike telemarketing, spam isn't the domain of a handful of the larger
companies, done at large telemarketing centers.  Even so, it took us over 2
years of telling callers to put us on their do not call list before we
really noticed a difference.  With spam, you have probably a few thousand
sources of it, with new sources starting every day.

Finally, most mailboxes used for "remove" reporting of spam tend to be
crappy free addresses with like a 5MB limit -- they're almost always full.

And what's better is that Colorado law allows for the recipient to get $10,
and their ISP to get $10 for each UCE message that a user receives which
does not meet certain criteria (including "ADV" in the subject).  The
problem is, how often do you get spam from companies in Colorado?

So, what action can you take?  Report the spam to the ISPs involved in
sending it and in hosting the site it advertises.  Getting their site shut
down is a great way of saying "I don't appreciate the e-mail".

Sean
-- 
 If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have
 schizophrenia.  -- Thomas Szasz
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python