Spam Lawsuit Clearinghouses? 24
cloudscout asks: "Spam is getting worse. Despite complex filtering and DNSBL systems the volume of unsolicited eMail continues to climb. The only promise so far has been an increasing number of laws designed to impede the spammers while others are using existing laws to tackle the problem. So when are we going to see this legal process become a commodity? There are already countless lawyers around the country who will accept a set price to fix traffic tickets, handle divorces and get the IRS off your back. When will we see attorneys who are willing to sue the spammers on your behalf for a reasonable, fixed fee?"
I dunno... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should I pay them? (Score:3, Insightful)
I see a few problems: first, is there any case law to make this a matter of filling out the correct boilerplate and dropping it off with a judge? Second, how does one collect from out of the country spammers?
It's way too early to do this kind of stuff. Divorces and traffic tickets have been around for quite a while, and the kinks have been worked out of the systems.
Re:Why should I pay them? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why a fee? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be the other way around? (Score:2)
Concidering how the general ethics level is in that perticular community, and much like the theme running in your analogy... there would probably be lawyer getting the spammers off spam suits, rather then to help condemning them.
Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Why does filtering work for me? I have several old domains with published email addresses. I probably get 1000 spams a day. SpamAssassin catches 99.8% of it, and AFAICT the only false positives I've ever had were messages discussing HGH cranks.
So, why does filtering work for me when it is supposedly futile?
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:3, Interesting)
I now have a new folder call it inbox_xxx. If someone is in my address book it gets into this email folder. If it gets to one of my mailing lists or other filters it gets in the proper folders. Otherwise it now stays in my inbox, where it is cons
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:1)
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
I suppose on a really busy mail server SA would peg cpu. But I'm guessing most installations have plenty of cpu to spare for SA.
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Having worked for a reasonably large hosting company (largest in the world based on number of active IP addresses...by domains it's still a pipsqueak, but not insignificant) I can say, with confidence, that SpamAssassin will -not- work in that environment.
Not easily, at least. And yes, deploying it was considered, but the CPU hit (as mentioned) would kill all of the servers (since they were all Web/App/Mail in a box type set ups).
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Also, if the local box doesn't have cpu to spare, a dedicated cpu farm for SA could be used. I guess your "Not easily" comment covers this. :)
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:1)
We decided that the only way to effectively roll SA out in their environment would have required setting up a number of different machines for it. For those clients that -really- wanted it, they look the other way.
Basically, with as small as the admin team is, there simply isn't the man power (and to sound egotistical, skill, they've had to hire a couple of folks to replace me since I left). Incidentally: 330 servers is a small fraction of the number of machines said previous employer had 6 mo
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:3, Insightful)
I still think that the key is to apply the existing computer-cracking laws against the various methods the spammers use to stay "one step ahead". Why is coming up with new variations on how to spell "viagra" any different from shoveling a dictionary into a password prompt, when the objective in both cases is to get into a comp
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:3, Interesting)
One batch wants all the newsletters from {fill in favorite hobby/group} but that mass mailer is blacklisted because they got an unscrubbed list from an unrelated client.
Meanwhile the small business person is afraid that they really might miss the "BIG $1,000,000 ORDER!!!"
A friend of mine is researching anti-spam for her
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Basically, postmaster is received, but probably not -replied to- by anyone because of the sheer volume of crap that comes in to those addresses. Having -been- an abuse desk, it gets read, and added to the complaint count for whoever you're complaining about.
'sides, the RFC only requires that it b
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Who decides what does and doesn't get filtered? If you put the ISP in charge of this, invariably you're going to wind up with users missing legitimate email (remember, it's up to the user to determine which messages he or she thinks are legitimate). When Jane User loses an email from Mom talking about how things are going - which happens to mention how Dad got a prescription for Viagra - she's going to be ticked.
2. How much computing power is needed? You get 1,000 emails a day. AOL gets billions. And while AOL probably has the cash to invest in a few Gibsons to scan billions of inbound email messages looking for keywords, your average ISP is unlikely to make such an investment. (Interesting now that I think about it; if they're filtering for spam, what else might the world's largest ISP - conveniently situated in the middle of Spookville - be looking for?)
Point 2 becomes an extension of point 1 when you think about the "obvious solution" to the question of who decides what's filtered. That obvious solution, naturally, would be to implement a system where each user gets to set up his or her own filters; similar to what Yahoo mail has done on a rather limited scale. The problem there is yet more processing time. Instead of blindly applying the same filter to all inbound messages, with each message the recipient must be determined and their unique filter rules loaded.
It's not that filtering doesn't work. It does work, but it loses both effectiveness and accuracy when control moves away from the individual recipient. I don't want my ISP filtering my email based upon their idea of what looks spammish, or their idea of which hosts should or shouldn't be sending me email. But my ISP doesn't want to invest in the resources to let each of its users control their own spam filtering. As long as that catch-22 exists, ISPs are either going to filter everything equally or they aren't going to filter at all.
Even if there were a real solution available (aside from shifting the burden of filtering to the end-users), you'd still see the major ISPs suggesting legislation instead of filtration. The reason is that even bit-bucketed spam costs money to receive. AOL filters something on the order of a billion emails a day; assuming an average of 1KB per message, if my calculations are right that comes out to approximately a terabyte of bandwidth per day comprised completely of inbound trash. You can bet they'd rather see spam outlawed than have to sit around and pay for it.
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
No, actually I've always used SA out of the box:
First two rules in .procmailrc:
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
This is true, in that better spam filtering will allow the ISP to put off buying bigger disks for a while. But a crucial difference between disk space and CPU cycles is that you can reuse disk, but you can't reuse CPU.
From the ISP's point of view, it may not make much sense to spend, say, 5 microseconds to run a Bayesian filter on a 5K message, and then decide to dump it in /dev/null instead of /var/spool/mail, whe
Re:Why does filtering work for me? (Score:2)
Well, a user can filter on the client side, and there's always cpu to spare on the client. Only downside vs. filtering on the mail server is that you've got to transfer the spam to the client. Which is a problem over modem, but not over DSL or better.
Anybody who hates spam enough to install a client-side filter is probably alread