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

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On April 13, 2006 14:01, Peter wrote:
> > Let me start by saying that I haven't been actively following
> > this thread so I may be very misinformed, but you're last
> > paragraph really struct a chord with me, particularly this
> > sentence: "This would prod 'innocent ignorers' into action." 
> > Now, I don't know if you are talking about charging business
> > servers, who should be taking appropriate action to ensure
> > they're not part of the problem or actual home users (Mom and
> > Pop), but I'm under the impression that it is the latter.  THIS
> > WILL NEVER HAPPEN.  I can just imagine the outrage of people who
> > are already frustrated by computers having to pay an additional
> > charge to be on the internet when, I think, a lot of these people
> > are on the internet only because they feel they have to be.  They
> > are already upset about paying for something they don't fully
> > understand.
>
> Anybody who sends email that gets returned as spam, beyond a
> certain small quota that takes care of temporary misconfigurations,
> should be charged in escrow, by his own ISP. If the email is not
> returned as spam, say within a week, the fee is waived. Mailing
> lists request and receive special permission. Anybody who sends
> spam using that ISP pays through the nose. Anybody whose computer
> was zombied gets a scary bill and the alternative of terminating
> the account or immediately sanitizing the computer and maybe paying
> a reduced fee for the inconvenience caused. The ISPs will be only
> too glad to oblige. Any spammer on their network would be charged
> to the tune of $20,000 per month. This would be good, because other
> ISPs who would receive the spam could sue them, and they would need
> the money for legal costs...

Who is going to mind the minders? I would have to trust the ISPs, who 
would have a vested interest in making sure that they return as 
little of your proposed deposit as possible. I'll live with the 
scourge of spam, thank you, rather than give companies like Rogers 
and Bell that pose as ISPs even more control than they already have.

As for penalizing the average person whose machine gets turned into a 
spam zombie, that would only punish them for the malicious actions of 
the criminals who compromised their computers. First, I'm skeptical 
that these machines are as big a problem as the anti-spam zealots 
seem to think they are because most ISPs now block port 25. Second, 
even if they are compromised, whose fault is that? The average person 
buys a computer, most likely running Windows, in good faith, gets an 
Internet connection, and just wants to "get stuff done". It's 
unrealistic to expect that they should all become sysadmins and tech 
experts just to send and receive email, type letters, and use a 
browser. This technology is supposed to make their lives easier, not 
more complicated.

All these proposals are just misdirected anger. Rather than penalize 
the spammers, they will victimize the victims even further. If such 
proposals are ever implemented, legitimate users will have to put up 
a deposit. Spammers of course will not because they would have no 
need to. They will just keep doing what they've been doing, stealing 
resources from others, using stolen credit cards to pay for hosting 
and putting up that wonderful deposit that you propose, stealing 
identities, finding spammer-friendly ISPs, and so on. By the time 
someone notices that their credit card has been misused, the spammer 
could have sent out several hundred million pieces of spam and moved 
onto the next person to burn. In other words, it will be business as 
usual for the spammers while it will be anything but for everyone 
else.

I will never support and in fact will fight tooth and nail any measure 
that requires the sender to pay to send email, even if that payment 
is refundable and I certainly get more than my fair share of spam 
every day.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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