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But while 86 per cent of the users surveyed find spam annoying or a big problem, they differ on their definitions of the problem.
Full Story [canoe.ca]
Why spam persists:
seven per cent of the e-mail users polled have bought something
Related: Just Desserts [signonsandiego.com]
The random telephone poll of 2,200 adults in June claims a margin of error of three percentage points.
Whenever I see articles about how bad spam is it reminds me of your suggestion that a research paper should be done on "spam as an indicator of human interest";)
It is also rather scary when legislators are the ones who are going to make decisions regarding outlawing spam. You can almost smell the casulties to legitimate e-mailing list uses.
Like it or not, they're the only ones who CAN outlaw spam.
Spam 'turning people off e-mail', report says:
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
Italy outlaws it: (not so recent)
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
I don't think the kind of international cooperation that would be necessary to fight spam is likely to happen.
International cooperation of that sort would be nice, but it is not compulsary -- any more than a country needs international cooperation to implement effect anti-terrorist vigilance at its own airports.
If knowingly or negligently passing on spam was an offence, then all ISPs in your country will be subject to some sanction by your fellow nationals.
Then, maybe, the ISPs will start being very careful about what mail they let through, -- in much the same way that immigation officials check incoming passengers.
Email profiling by ISPs, automated double-checking and source-verification if anything looks suspect, etc, etc before an email is forwarded, would cut the vast majority of spam.
Trouble is, ISPs right now just shrug their shoulders and say "hey, we're just the mail carrier; don't blame us".
But it is *illegal* to send certain things in the physical mail (check your postal regulations for details) and the postal authorities actively check for these things. If ISPs want to be thought of as "just" mail carrriers they need to take the same degree of care.
1) Protect your email address
OK, so you have an internet site, how do you not put your email address on the site? (This person is a narrow-minded individual who is thinking of his own situation and not the problem as a whole)
2) Junk mail is fine, so junk email should be fine
When was the last time you got porn in the post? And who pays for the message? With postal junk mail the seller has paid for the mail, for the paper, for the envelope....with email (particularly WAP phones) it is the customer who pays!
3) How will they get paid if they don't send there marketing messages?
They could try Google AdWords, Overture, Espotting, normal mail marketing, advertising on billboards, TV adverts, Radio adverts....oh, wait! But they cost money!
It's interesting, but there still seems to be a lot of misguided people out there.
so you have an internet site, how do you not put your email address on the site?
[webmasterworld.com...]
Fantastic! So the user has to have JavaScipt enabled, just he can email me?
in a recent discussion, the rate of enablement was
pegged at +80%
however, you can also just put your email in an
image file and serve that up on the page. no
javascript required. you can even make the image
a clickable link for those who have javascript enabled
and are too lazy to type in the address for themselves.
++++
Eg
<noscript>me at mydomain.com</noscript>
or better still
<noscript>me at mydomian.com</noscript>
A real human user will probably read the second as "mydomain.com", or quickly work out what is wrong from the context. A harvester wouldn't, even if it was programmed to interpret "at" as "@".
There are even more sophistictated tricks. Invent one for yourself.
In the meantime, the majority of web users, who have Javascript turned on, will be able to email at a click (or equivalent).
last night i had to deal with a site about
a copyright matter. they have something like
2+ million pages in G*. the only means of
contact was a page that demanded my email
address as a requirement for posting.
no dice! i left a message telling them to
check their whois contact email for an incoming
message, and left *their* email as the required
address for submission.
then i sent my email.
if their whois contact info, which is an email
address a Y!, is inaccurate, no problem, the *formerly*
discreet notification that they have a copyright
problem gets routed through their ISP with a
request for forwarding to their client on an
urgent basis.
their ISP treats it as a DMCA notice?
not my problem anymore.
