Will certified e-mail stop spam? (was: unsubscribing... etc)

Peter plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org
Thu Apr 13 09:21:45 UTC 2006


On Wed, 12 Apr 2006, Jason Spiro wrote:

> On 4/12/06, Jamon Camisso <jamon.camisso-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> I wonder if you meant to say "instead of being a fatal blow?" I should
>> think that in this case, unsuspecting users would be an *asset* in
>> striking the fatal blow at a pay-per-message scheme.
>
> Jamon, Christopher,
>
> I would prefer a bond-based system by far: a system where there's only
> a charge if the recipient clicks the "This is spam" button. A

Hmm, there is a point to this. Charge up front anyway and if there is 
*no* 'spam' feedback credit the sender account for the amount charged ? 
After a while there should be a floating sum in each account, that 
covers mail cost per billing period. That sum would be zero for all 
non-commercial accounts which do not send spam. So commercial spam would 
cost the sender money and normal mail would not. Moreover, spammers 
would have feedback as to what 'goes' and what does not. Then, one could 
implement nonlinear pricing for mass spam, e.g. a spam would cost as 
little as a postage stamp, but 10,000 per week returned as spam would up 
the price to 50c/mail (the ISP makes $5000 cash per spammer account per 
week), 20,000 for $1/mail etc. Sounds good so far, no ?

I mean, if there is no negative feedback built into the system, it will 
run away. So far, the positive feedback is the revenue from spam, and it 
is not countered by anything. The negative feedback being built now must 
balance this, or it will be useless. If Internet stories are true, then 
one can 'buy' into a botnet for $25 per thousand of zombies. If returns 
are what is also mentioned on the net, then $25 buys the real advertiser 
$50 to $250 in business. So to quench this, the cost of running 1000 
zombies must be made to exceed $250, or $0.25 per zombie. Since each 
zombie could send thousands of emails until caught, putting a price as 
small as 1 cent per email returned as spam should drive the cost of 
spamming through the roof, first by making small but significant charges 
at zombied computer operators appear, who would likely prefer to spend 
the spam tax on antivirus programs and proper setup.

Effectively there would be a computer mismanagement charge for people 
who do not secure their machines and leave them open to attack, 
amounting to $10 or more per month per machine (assuming 10,000 emails 
returned as spam at 1 cent each per month). This would prod 'innocent 
ignorers' into action. Of course it would do nothing for real spammers, 
but they would have to start buying serious bandwidth since zombies 
should start being scarce after a while.

$0.01
Peter
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml





More information about the Legacy mailing list