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

[Peter]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:

> 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.

I was trying to suggest a self-regulating decentralised system, based on 
voluntary participation by ISPs. An ISP has no interest to keep money 
from the deposit. As a user, you would switch providers asap.

> 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

Try to find an analogy: parking your car unlocked and with the keys in 
the ignition, and not minding if someone takes a trip with it from time 
to time. Worse, he could use it to harass someone or set up a bank 
heist, and you still don't mind. Assume the car was really locked but it 
has locks of a well-known flawed type, that anyone can open with a 
master key.

> 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

That's the flaw. The 'in good faith' ... default setup ... Windows 
part. The point is, this set of assumptions is WRONG. Because the 
default setup does not deliver, and has not, so the 'in good faith' is 
seriously flawed.

> 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.

Leave your car unlocked, it's your business. Knowingly have others use 
it to heist a bank, and you're guilty. There is no kind of question 
about it. The question is, how do you pay for the damage ? Jail is out, 
doing nothing is out, warnings and begging does not help, so use some 
language most people understand: $, Pesos, Shekels, Loonies. Not too 
steep, it would be bad for business, but it should be clear to anyone 
that a proper (as opposed to illegal or pirated) antivirus setup and 
yearly subscription is significantly cheaper than ignoring the sluggish 
pc and the popup hijackings of the web browser.

> All these proposals are just misdirected anger. Rather than penalize
> the spammers, they will victimize the victims even further. If such

There has got to be a system that balances the low cost of sending spam. 
The one I proposed would be one, there could be others. Until the 
ability of making money by sending spam will not be balanced by costs, 
spam will NOT CEASE to be a problem. In other words, any solution will 
have to involve money. Spam is being sent because it is cheap. That has 
to stop.

> 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

But it will become harder and harder for them to do so. Because users 
who so far let their systems wide open (I really don't care why, after 
two or three warnings they have to fess up or return to offline life, or 
pay for the bandwidth and costs - not last that of infecting their 
network neighbors and people on their contact lists - they are helping 
waste - one of them). So the cost of finding and setting up 'zombies' 
will grow until it will start quenching the demand for spam, from the 
people who pay for it.

It's just the way I see it.

Peter
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