Forum Moderators: phranque
Question: What is to be done about the avalanche of junk/spam email that is inflicting the online world?
In my opinion, this problem is getting so out of hand, it threatens to drive a stake through the heart of ecommerce.
We are a microbusiness - just my wife and myself - and we receive on a daily basis between 300 & 400 emails, of which 95% is total garbage. Much of it is downright offensive.
I am getting the sense that a lot of people are turning away from using the web as much as they would otherwise because they are tired of being assaulted by this unrelenting onslaught. When you then also factor in a constant barrage of popup windows, and search engine results that have only peripheral relevance to the query, you have a recipe for disaster. For an awful lot of folks, it is not fun anymore.
Fortunately, I found a tremendous email program called EmC5.0 that allows me to bump this crap off the server without having to download it to our machine. But how many casual users even know such programs exist?
Here are a few solutions I will offer about controlling this disease:
[1] Outlook, Eudora, and other email programs must build into the user interface the ability to easily check the server to see what is there prior to downloading, so the spam can be immediately eliminated;
[2] Since much of the problem originates with the free email accounts - Yahoo, Hotmail, etc - they must do everything possible to limit the number of emails that an account can send. Limit by account name, limit with a cookie, limit by IP address if necessary. They might not stop it, but they might slow it down;
[3] Make it a federal law that all mass email communications *must* include a no-nonsense "remove me", just as is being mandated in the telemarketing field. That means that you must remove the person from your own list, and, under no circumstances can you then sell the name to anyone else. If you do, you face severe fines.
Those are just 3 ideas that occur to me - each of which is do-able. I would love to see a dialogue from others who have their own ideas...
[wired.com...]
This is bad news and good news: Bad news because those people might have missed important information; good news because that is the level of aggravation that is eventually going to force the implementation of steps for dealing with this mess.
Good followup story about the reaction by authorities:
[wired.com...]
There may be light on the horizon....
Crazy_Fool: If you receive one of my emails, you can write one email in return asking to be removed from the list. I will remove you.
If you send one person 10K mails, I will contact my ISP and have you banned.
But I refuse to be drawn into another pointless debate about this with you.
Even adult entertainers require a license in our state.
This gives the consumers legal recourse and funds those who prosecute violators. I suppose other countries could offer bulk services outside these restrictions - but they'd also have bulk emailers over a barrel if they, too, choose to tax and regulate them. The ones that don't? I s'pose ban whole IP blocks and resort to spamware. How much worse off could we be?
Just a thought.
I must go gas up my full size truck and buy cigarettes at the corner 24 hr. store. See ya.
But a good one, that I find completely reasonable.
I was talking to my neighbor about all this, and his immediate response was "the government should stay out". Any my answer was - "Why??" The government is involved in MY business, why is it that these people are given a carte blanc pass? What is it about them that makes them SO special that they should be allowed to aggravate millions of email recipients, waste immense amounts of bandwidth, and offend decent people (who have no interest in seeing their children read subject lines about sex with animals, for example).
I cannot think of one single reason why they should be outside of all the rules and regulations that the rest of us must work/play under.
So yes, require licensing. Some countries will not do this, but all those that want extra revenue will do so, and that is likely MOST countries. After they are licensed, then make them pay one penny for every email that they send every month past # 1000. I am willing to do that - my server could keep a tally and add it to my bill.
These companies that send out 10,000,000 emails a week would be adding a nice bit of revenue to the enforcement agency coffers - almost certainly enough to pay for their existence. As far as I am concerned, it can't happen soon enough!
Email Filtering: Killing the Killer App [db.tidbits.com]
That said, I don't like spam any more than the rest of you.
For those on a corporate email system, the IT department is usually in charge of bulk filtering.
Here is my fantasy solution: Why can't ISP's offer to users a control panel for their email account. That control panel would allow me to have two "compartments" to my one main account - a "favorites" and "everything else". I could configure the favorites to accept every single email that was from certain senders, or, had certain specific subject lines - in either case I would list/edit all that I wanted in this "favorites" section of the control panel.
For the other compartment - "everything else" - I could set up an "always deny by sender" list, and a "always deny by subject" list. I could add to (or remove from) these filters whenever I wanted.
All of this is done at the server - *not* from my harddrive.
So as each new email arrived at my inbox at the server, it would first be checked to see if it was a favorite, and if so, it would go straight through to the favorites section of my inbox. If not, it would be checked against both these "deny" lists, and would be DELETED if it met any of my conditions. If it did not meet any of my conditions, then it would go into the "everything else" box.
When I configure my account, I could indicate how much space I wanted allocated to each compartment - let's say 2MB for favorites, and 3MB for everything else. Then when I check my email, all my favorites would be listed first, and all the others immediately thereafter.
If I went away on vacation and the "everything else" box got filled, I might still have plenty room in the favorites box, which is likely where the most important stuff is anyway. So I wouldn't have to worry about messages that I actually wanted being bounced back just because the overall inbox was filled (only "everything else" is filled in this example).
I'd gladly pay an extra dollar every month for this kind of optionaly flexibility, and I bet a lot of other people would too. Multiply that out by thousands of people and it would probably more than cover the cost of the software that the servers would need to pull this off.
So my question to any of the server folks who monitor this forum is simply this: why isn't something like this being offered by ISP's as part of the dial-up package? To my (admittedly) uninitiated mind, it seems like a do-able solution....
Yahoo! web-mail does this. Banner ads and a few popups, but filtered at the
server and has a virus-scanning option, too.
I use it mostly so I can check my e-mail anywhere in the world, but it does
have the features you mention...
Jim
That's why I went to mailwasher. The "console" is local, but the processing is done at the server. Once processed, you only download those that passed your filters.
As mentioned, I'm on mailwasher, as are many of the other members here, but there are several other free mail screening apps out there that work the same way. All they lack is your idea for different sort bins.
This certainly has been an informative discussion - thanks to everyone for all the input....
