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OK.....wait for it....
MS, Yahoo and AOL are joining forces to fight spam!
Now stop laughing!
I said stop!
OK, laugh some more....
....got it out of your system yet?
No.....
....OK this could take a while......
Hehe the net is safe from spam indeed! ;)
Scott
See previous post
We shall fight them on the servers ...
Anti-Spam coalition [webmasterworld.com]
While it does seem a bit odd, those three getting together and all - I just keep in mind that with respect to UCE/SPAM what serves one, serves them (and us) all.
Pendanticist.
In theory it does serve to be better for us all.
But AoL / MS are also two of the biggest collectors of consumer information on the net (and sellers / abusers* thereof).
I would bet my bottom dollar that any new measures they take would involve the average user providing the corporate monsters with more information - with which they will no doubt use to <ahem> provide better services direct to their users.
Aka acceptable spam.
Perhaps we will see the end of the solo-spammer, perhaps we won't. But more information for the big players, means just as much junk for us.
Information is pow-ah! ;)
Scott
*by abuse i am not suggesting any illegal activities whatsoever, just that both MS and AOL like to suggest products that might be of interest to their users, friends, family, people they met on the bus, that weird guy at the end of the street........ ;)
Case in point: I'm going to be re-locating to Tuscon, AZ in the near future and doing the cross-country move myself. (I bed-bugged for a couple large movers in my previous life, so it's no biggie and driving is my only non-humanistic love that I'll admit to in public.)
So, I'm looking over the two major self-moving companies websites and nearly each step of the way through the forms (both companies) they extracted yet another tid-bit of personal data. E-mail to move to this page, phone number to move on to the next page, nail down a date to get to the next phase and so on. What a crock.
All I wanted to know was how much was the Truck, dollies, room-packs, pads and the car hauler. Not give them my lifes particulars.
Naturally, since 'forms' are inherently stupid, my e-mail addy is noneofyourbusiness@some-such-whatever.com and my phone number is 1.111.111.1111, while I actually reside at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
<Bseg>
Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is this. No matter how much information we give (in return for something free) there will always be improvements on that free stuff which will require more information.
How, and to what extent, we chose to give that information is the true question. No matter what they want me to subscribe to, I don't.
Pendanticist.
My boss subscribed us to a web-sevice (real estate listings) that required users to go through 6 pages of forms (every detail imaginable) before they could even search the DB our properties were listed on.
I convinced him that most users just will not fill out all that rubbish just to search when other sites offer no-strings attached property searching.
On another site I have in past urged users to fill out fake info in online forms and surveys (maily because my biggest competitor is a notorious information horder and abuser and were carrying out a "survey" at the time).
My angle was that if enough people fill out fake details, etc the data will have less value to the companies and then the semi-targetted junk mail will end. Not realistic, but hey! :)
Slightly off topic, Ive read a report on the information usage of Monster / AOL (5 years old though) and it's dam scary.
A few years ago Monster had a crawler design to lift CV's off other sites (private homepages, competitors, etc). Their cheif exec's were quoted (by a former cheif exec) as saying that the money lies in the marketing use of personal CV data. There were also issues with the Monster / AOL relationship and the tracking of individual click throughs (by IP / username / CV data it was suggested).
Even with the most basic stats package (Webaliser) I was able to track down a hell of a lot of information about a competitor spamming my site - I dread to think what large companies can do with budgets! ;)
Scott
Seriously as well, i think this is a sign that those with the most to lose commercially realise that if e-mail spam continues as it does e-mail as a form of serious communication is going the way of the dinosaur. It is just too much trouble to delete away 480 spam emails to get 20 legitimate ones. The subject headings are often offensive, 90% in some way or the other lie by suggesting they know you already, that they are replying to you, and so on. Its possibly only people like ys that get that amount of junk a day, but soon regular users will find it is affecting their qulity of life and work life too.
To these 3 giant companies it is a matter of survival. They all depend on people being online, and e-mail spam is getting so bad its causing many to actually spend less time on the web, reduce their trust in the internet, and some to turn off altogether.
That said, i would hate to see the e-mail protocals changed to give more power in the hands of big coporates. Its a great pity that the Web and internet community together have not yet being able to develop effective methods of reducing email spam without "corporatising it", which i have no doubt is the long term goal of this initiative.
Its business survival simple as that. The same as it is on all of our OWN interest to help in reducing spam on the web, as it will get to the stage that people will start turning off the Web en masse as well - and nobody will see our stuff anyway.
There most be a third option!
Scott
I agree though, there must be another option. I think there will need to be a change in email protocal. Somehing like all email requiring a digital signiture before it can be sent or received. Spamm reports on a signiture will void the signiture and make it impossible to send email.
I think eventualy there will have to be an international email "sorting office" where all email passes through on ruit to it's destination. If you receive spamm you forward it to the "sort office" and all mail the same is delited before it is send to it's sender. It could be a non profit cetral organisation but woudl have to be funded by a corporation, something like the odp and aol. If action is taken eventualy the spammers would give up.
Spamm is for sure destroying email as a communication tool. Something needs to be done.
