Wave of the Future (Spam)

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Wed Jun 20 08:40:26 2001

At 06:25 PM 6/19/01 -0600, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>I'm not sure why this continues to be the problem that it is. I agree that SPAM
>is terribly annoying, but can't comprehend why it can't be dealt with from the
>INSIDE, i.e. simply rewrite the SMTP/POP protocol rules such that mail only
>allows a single addressee, and that any server that sees more than one destinee,
>either in the "to" field or the CC field, it simply pitches it in the bit
>bucket.
>If I ever want to send several people the same email, which I've not yet done,
>after about 10 years of internetting, I'd simply write a script to do that.

And what about the 99.99% of Internet (read: Windows) users who
liked that "send to two people" feature of Outlook? You expect
them to write scripts? What about all the BCC: mail that gets
sent that doesn't have N addresses in the headers? Gee, if we
limited the size and number of e-mails you could send, that would
help reduce bandwidth, too. Slower computers would be a great
deterrent, too.

>THERE HAS GOT TO BE ACCOUNTABILITY on the internet. If your name, and home
>address were in every message you send, you would probably not send unsolicited
>email.

If such a rule were in place, I'm sure there are millions of companies
who'd gladly send spam that conformed. In the paper world, it's called
"junk mail" and it seems to be quite popular. In the e-mail world, at
least half the junk I get does have reasonable attribution to the source.
The "problem" with spam is that it apparently works for some scams,
and that there's plenty of people willing to try it.

- John
Received on Wed Jun 20 2001 - 08:40:26 BST

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