Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[Keith Nash]

On Friday 27 February 2004 13:07, David Presotto wrote:
> So just take it to its logical connclusion and
> make it a pull protocol.  You get a note with a URL
> and grab it at your leasure.
...
> It changes the nature of spam somewhat, i.e., it would
> become a short message containing nothing but a URL and
> a subject.  Oops, that's what most of my spam already is
> but at least it means they can't fire and forget, they have
> to leave servers up.

I like this idea; although I don't think it hurts spammers enough.  If you send 10 million _almost identical_ messages, it is a trivial exercise to write a PHP or CGI script to deliver the appropriate message payload when 0.1% of the recipients call for it.  I am assuming that, in this new system, SPF records have been implemented, so that the spam is not delivered from a transient network of compromised Windows machines.

The rules for new-style messages could also say that:
(1) the message payload can only be picked up from the domain that sent the message;
(2) if A sends mail to B, A must whitelist B for traditional SMTP.  Therefore, if A is unknown to B, B may automatically send (traditional SMTP) verbose messages to A stating that A's message <Message-ID> has been received but its payload has not yet been collected.  If these messages are rejected, or elicit an adverse response, B need not bother collecting the original message payload from A.

This hurts the spammers a little more, because now 100% of recipients will send back a long SMTP message.  Hmm, the spammers seem to be able to afford the bandwidth; and we can't make the automated response too long, or a user will be able to mount a DOS attack against his own ISP, simply by sending lots of mail.  OTOH, maybe that's not a bad thing: an ISP _ought_ to cap a user's outgoing mail allowance long before it hits the 10 million per day mark, unless the user has made arrangements in advance to pay the ISP for this service.

A computational challenge/response is sometimes suggested: the automated mail from B to A could contain the challenge.

And of course it will be more difficult than at present to configure mail servers without creating mail loops.  The effect of these can be mitigated by delaying the sending of automated responses.

And it goes without saying that there is no complete solution to spam: my snail-mail is about 2/3 spam.  It's the price that I pay for having an address that anyone can send to.  All we can aim for is to try to reduce email spam to the same sort of manageable level.

Keith.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[Geoff Collyer]

One reason you get so much paper spam (junk mail) is that the post
office (at least in the US and I believe Canada) *subsidises* the
spammers: they get lower postal rates for bulk spamming.

The only reason people tolerate paper spam is that most individuals
don't get 100 - 200 pieces of paper mail per day, but some of us do
get that much (or more) electronic mail.  In the 1980s as a computer
center system administrator, I got about 200 messages every working
day, and that was before electronic spam.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[George Michaelson]

Paper spam, just like e-spam, is in the eye of the beholder.

I get and *use* quite a lot of paper spam. it makes for some financial sense
to track the price specials on commodities I live off. (I means 'my family')
based on this read, we can track the marketing practices of the distributors
who move their 10c off specials amongst the three competing chains of supermarkets
on a bi-weekly basis (to avoid collusive pricing issues I infer)

When I need to buy whitegoods, I choose to keep the catalogs I otherwise chuck
away unread, until I have enough *current* ones to know where the price breaks are
and to feed into my engineering choices should go to look at quality/price issues

the spam I never use, is the ones where the post office fronts for the agencies
and asks me to profile myself, so they can tailor their spam. Strange, because
if they did a better job, my filtering would be easier. I suspect the jewellers
would want to stop spamming me, if they knew I will not be buying their rings.

of course, there is a problem here: the cheapest distribution channel here is
not the post office, but hand delivery. and they ARE the bottom of the foodchain,
otherwise unemployed home-workers, children, refugees. they have no time to
filter or target, their pay is based on volume and footprint only.

if we want to fix this social problem, then its best we institute better
minimum wage and social policy. If people didn't have to hand this bumwad
out for peanuts, then the paper spammers would not send as much.

so I call on my fellow socialists (liberals for the yanks, who do not seem to know
that down here, the liberal party is to the right of the john birch society) to
formally refuse to accept their spam in the letterbox until they know its delivered
by dolphin-friendly, tree hugging minimum-wage earners, and at that point, accept
spam aggressively.

you know it makes sense.

-George

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[boyd, rounin]

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Michaelson" <ggm@apnic.net>
> I get and *use* quite a lot of paper spam. it makes for some financial
sense
> to track the price specials on commodities I live off. (I means 'my
family')
> based on this read, we can track the marketing practices of the
distributors
> who move their 10c off specials amongst the three competing chains of
supermarkets
> on a bi-weekly basis (to avoid collusive pricing issues I infer)

3 bottles of JD.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[David Presotto]

Please don't fix the paper spam problem until after the winter, I need
the paper as tinder.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[9nut]

> Please don't fix the paper spam problem until after the winter, I need
> the paper as tinder.

Not to worry. I'll send you some pinecones.  oh, wait, that would be a raw form
of paper spam.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Geoff Collyer wrote:
> One reason you get so much paper spam (junk mail) is that the post
> office (at least in the US and I believe Canada) *subsidises* the
> spammers: they get lower postal rates for bulk spamming.

But by presorting they lower processing cost.  Last time
I heard a Postmaster explain this, he said that actually
the bulk-rate mail paid its way while first-class did not.
That was before several increases in first-class postal
rates, however, so perhaps now they both do.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[Axel Belinfante]

Doug replied:
> Geoff Collyer wrote:
> > One reason you get so much paper spam (junk mail) is that the post
> > office (at least in the US and I believe Canada) *subsidises* the
> > spammers: they get lower postal rates for bulk spamming.
> 
> But by presorting they lower processing cost.  Last time
> I heard a Postmaster explain this, he said that actually
> the bulk-rate mail paid its way while first-class did not.
> That was before several increases in first-class postal
> rates, however, so perhaps now they both do.

Here in the netherlands we also have a reduced price
for 'bulk' (> 250 items?) postings, which also have to
be offered in a presorted way -- and at the time (10 years ago?)
I was involved in sending out some post this way, you were given
a nice small booklet with the sorting rules, and you could
buy from the post a program that would help you to get the 'bundle'
info for easier sorting on your address labels. The program was
pretty expensive, something like euro 350 or so.
When I made a remark about that when handing in my presorted
bundles, like 'presorting makes your job easier, giving us the
program makes it easier for us to comply to the presorting rules'
the post man told me that basically they (he?) did not care too
much about the (my) presorting anyway because their automatic
sorters could do that job just as easily anyway...
(ok, we were a very small client, some 250 items every two months) 

With respect to paper spam avoidance: here in the netherlands
we have two kind of official labels you can put on your mailbox:
Ja - Nee (yes to unscubscribed house-to-house ditributed newspapers,
          no to non-addressed advertisements), and
Nee - Nee (No to both of them)
They work well - only occasionally something unwanted slips though.

Axel.

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[Axel Belinfante]

to continue OT, I wrote:
> With respect to paper spam avoidance in the netherlands
[there is an official avoidance scheme withe labels on mailboxes]
> They work well - only occasionally something unwanted slips though.

And maybe that's the reason (combined with low effectiveness of even
'well targeted' direct mail?) that we nowadays get those unsolicited
phone calls 'do you have a minute?'. they are _really_ annoying.
and when I suggest 'whatever you have to say, why don't you stuff it
in an envelope and mail it to me' they say: 'no, out of principle,
we never send something...'. oh well..

Re: [9fans] spam (was "pathetic")

[matt]

OT but the UK "do not call list" has worked for me

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk

I've had 1 sales call since Sept. 2002 when I joined, down from 1 per week beforehand.

m