Spam-Free Email-How Much Would that Be Worth to You? 45
Elias Israel asks: "Being a believer in free-market solutions, wherever possible, I am puzzled by the relative lack of technical/business solutions to the problem of SPAM. Given that dealing with SPAM wastes so much of our lives these days, and given that the famed 'time = money' equation has not yet been repealed, I'm at a loss to understand why I can't find more commercial solutions to this problem. Having heard long ago that whenever the question is 'why' the answer is always about money, I'm asking for Slashdot readers' help: Can it really be that there's no money to be made in cleaning up spam? So, if you could virtually eliminate spam from your inbox, how much would you be willing to pay to make that happen? Given that filtering spam is an ongoing and evolving hassle, would you be willing to pay an annual or monthly fee, and if so how much? Maybe if we can figure this out, the economics of a solution will emerge." Given that now SPAM includes e-mail viruses from your favorite Washington-state based company, the rules of the game are now MUCH more different than they were. Still, would some of you out there be interested in paying to remove SPAM from your inbox?
You're kidding right? (Score:1, Informative)
None of those things requires money.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Sign up for a free email account that you don't plan on using for your main email address. It's much easier to let go of an email account (if you have to) when you aren't shelling out money for it. You should have two... A main email address and a dummy email address.
2. Use the dummy email address to sign up for any sites where the email address might be stored or displayed on a page. That's usually where spammers will get your email address by using harvesting software.
3. The main address can be given out to family and friends, but NEVER post it on a message board. That's pretty much asking for it. This way, only legitimate email will come to your inbox.
4. Check the dummy act about once a week for legitimate email that may have found its way there by mistake, and if need be, send a reply email with the main email address. Delete the SPAM.
5. Accept the fact that sometimes SPAM is sent out to random email addresses, and you may still get one or two a week.
6. DO NOT EVER reply to SPAM, and don't ever follow instructions to be removed from the "mailing list." This just lets the spammer know that someone is actually reading the email, and you will get even more.
7. DON'T BUY ANYTHING. If people never bought anything from someone who sent them spam, do you honestly think that they would continue to go through the trouble of sending it?
Maybe not a complete solution, but I can almost guarantee that it will make a fairly large dent in the ammount of spam you get.
Good for ISPs? (Score:1)
On the other hand, when we put a similar product on our servers that filtered out about 25-50% of spam (real time black listing), we actually had a user call up and complain that he _wasn't_ getting his porn advertisments anymore! You just can't win! heh.
Re:Good for ISPs? (Score:2)
Not difficult, folks (Score:2, Informative)
rbl_domains = relays.ordb.org:orbz.gst-group.co.uk:inputs.orbz.
rbl_reject_recipients = true
rbl_warn_header = false
recipients_reject_except = postmaster@ursine.dyndns.org
Re:Not difficult, folks (Score:2)
False positives are low (Score:1)
Re:Not difficult, folks (Score:2)
1. This eliminates the original connection from the spammer's box itself, right? So there is very little bandwidth used in even an ATTEMPTED spam?
2. Is it easy to port to Postfix? (I just run Postfix, am not a guru...)
Re:Not difficult, folks (Score:1)
As for porting to postfix, I'm not sure. I can't imagine anything's easier to do this in than exim.
MonsterMail does this (Score:2)
Not surprisingly, they're at www.monstermail.com [monstermail.com].
21.95 per month (Score:2)
Question: Isn't it MY email address? Like my phone number?
While we all probably get junk mail in our 'snail' mailboxes, it takes no time on our part to sort through it. I usually know what is junk in about two minutes or less and just chuck it in the recucle bin. With spam it can take longer to sort through because it takes MY time to download the mail. I have gotton sometimes over 30 spam emails a day. While my email filters filter out much of it into a special folder, some places are now getting my real email address and spaming that. This ends up in my inbox. Do you know how long it takes to download some of this email? Especially if there is a slow connection. Or if they decide that they are going to send HTML with graphics. Yes I can turn off the html, but aside from setting up 'do not download email that is larger that xxx bytes' how do you stop images?
What I'd like to see is some company come up with server side email filters, like I have in my email app. Where I as a user can set up email filters that say any mail that does not meet this criteria just reject. So I do not have to ever download the email. It would cut my span down by about 50 to 70 percent. Just my solution. The isp can reject the email or just send it to /dev/null for all I care..
Re:21.95 per month (Score:2)
Procmail, my friend, procmail. If you are running a linux/unix box for a mailserver, use procmail.
Re:21.95 per month (Score:2)
Re:21.95 per month (Score:2)
While we all probably get junk mail in our 'snail' mailboxes, it takes no time on our part to sort through it.
Nope, I only get junk mail from a few wierd companies (AT&T), and when the mailman just gets lazy and shoves the general stack of daily junk into my box instead of the apartment next to mine.
To really reduce the junk mail you get (in the U.S.A., anyways), follow the instructions at junkbusters.com [junkbusters.com]-- costs some money to send all the letters out ($5 in postage?), but the amount of general crap I receive in the mail went down dramatically after doing so.
On the email side of things, yes, procmail is nifty, though a better place for such filters is in the MTA (currently done with heavy-handed arbitrary blackhole lists), so that mail can be rejected as spam before even coming near the local delivery agent. You can do this in a proper user-specified fashion with PerlMX [activestate.com], however, that's $$$...
Re:21.95 per month (Score:2)
Now convince my ISP to use that and allow me to set up filters for my own email account and we'd be all set.
Re:21.95 per month (Score:2)
This exists, it's called Sieve, a *generic* server-side mail filtering package, that allows for remote uploading of scripts.
Now, getting ISPs to widely support it might be a problem, but free solutions do exist. (I also saw procmail mentioned).
Infeasible (Score:2)
Spamcop.net (Score:3, Informative)
Works great for me. And it digs through the mail headers to see who really sent the emails.
http://spamcop.net
Oops, Slashdot covered this (Score:2)
Re:Spamcop.net (Score:3, Insightful)
Offers both FREE reporting, and advanced "you pay for it" filtering (which I think is based upon volume -- but still very cheap).
From the SpamCop FAQ [spamcop.net]:
The price is $.50 per megabyte of email processed. This charge is asessed when a) the email is received at your SpamCop account or b) when you paste email into SpamCop's reporting form and hit "parse."
Most e-mail is checked by some filters, then forwarded to your 'real' e-mail account. Also, on the members' page [spamcop.net], there's information on a new system that's planned:
This system is currently beta, but we will be moving to full availability quickly. We are currently soliciting beta testers. Probably the most significant change is that the new system will have unlimited use for $3/month ($36/year). People who use SpamCop only for reporting spam will not notice a change.
And from the information page [spamcop.net]:
The new system has been totally redesigned to be easier to use and more reliable than ever. Received email is delivered into one of two folders, either your Inbox or your Held Mail folder. A full webmail system is available to view these folders, as well as others you create. With an addressbook, filters, and email sending capability, the webmail sysetm is all you need to do email. If you prefer, though, you can use your existing email program and read your mail using IMAP or POP protocols, just like most mail servers.
The main benefit of an '@spamcop.net' e-mail address is, however, that most e-mail addresses with 'spam' in thier names are filtered by spammers, assuming they are munged.
This means I can give out my e-mail (michaeltandy@spamcop.net [mailto]) in web forums and such places, and nobody sends me any spam.
I think it's worth the cost, which is very reasonable.
Michael
Link you can click [spamcop.net]
sneakemail.com (Score:1)
yeah, i will pay for it..... (Score:1)
SpamCop (Score:1)
The market that isn't there (Score:1)
Pay in time (Score:2)
This has the advantage that _I_ control it totally. I don't have to switch email addresses, something I'm not willing to do. And as I filter at the server level, I can continue to use any email client I want (and I use three on a regular basis).
So let us pretend that I make $50 000 a year. One hour of my time is therefore worth about $25. So I'd pay about $25 for a filter that eliminates spam _permanently_ and meets the above criteria.
Of course, I haven't done either. I guard my email address and only get a few pieces of spam each day. I can just delete those messages without reading them, most of the time. This probably means that I'm not willing to pay that much, though I still think the urge may hit me one day to play with procmail or something.
Bigfoot.com (Score:2)
Why filtering doesn't work. (Score:1)
Problem: I think spammers run a loop of every possible email address, at the major ISP's.
Example: My wife has never, ever posted to Usenet, a web site, etc etc. even under an alias. Completely unknown to the outside world.
But she gets 5x the spam that I do. Why? Her email address is short - only 3 letters before the @. Occasionally one slips through that has the victims listed in 'cc' instead of 'bcc' - and many start with the same letter.
(How else could she have gotten on these lists?)
Brightmail (Score:1)
Brightmail provides advanced message management solutions that enable ISPs, ASPs, wireless service providers, Internet portals and enterprises to protect the integrity, efficiency, security and usability of their email systems. Through Mailwall(TM) protection, the Brightmail Solution Suite pairs server-based filtering and around-the-clock support and analysis to prevent email-borne threats.
Pay for what part of it? (Score:1)
Procmail is your friend (Score:2)
isn't the solution obvious? (Score:1)
ok fine, I guess you'd have to get them a computer and internet connection too... this is a great way to offload that old Pentium 90 gathering dust in the corner!
Satisfied SpamCop user (Score:2, Informative)
As you can see, I don't mask my e-mail address on these posts. I am a registered user of spamcop.net [spamcop.net], and now I get maybe 1 spam a month.
When asked for an e-mail address on a survey, a website, or to fill in anywhere, I provide my spamcop address [mailto]. Also, when giving e-mail addys out to friends/family, I provide the spamcop address.
When you send a message to my account, you automatically get a bounce reply. You can reply to this message, and your message will be sent as normal. From then on, you never have to worry about it. Alternatly, I can authorize you from their simple web admin system. Also, I can deny whole domains, specific users, anything, just by filling out a couple forms.
If I don't like what I see on there (I check it about once a week), I can simply report it as spam to their ISPs, delete it, or allow it, with a few simple clicks.
They also filter out all attachments (you can turn this off if you want). My family is a group of computer neophytes, they are constantly getting viruses. I'm notified that there was an attachment, but it never gets to my box. I can safely tell them they're infected, and I never see it again.
The price is extremely good. I paid $25 for 50MB of e-mail almost a year ago. I've still got some 40MB left (most mailings are no more than 10k, usually much less).
I know I sound like a commercial, but I feel it's important to point out the great business when I find 'em.
Re:Satisfied SpamCop user (Score:3, Interesting)
I just wish that Yahoo would truly black-hole anything it would otherwise put in the "Bulk Mail" folder. Since it wont automatically delete bulk mail it just means I have to download it an let my Eudora filters sort it out (Yahoo adds a specific header to bulk mail). Some days that means it takes quite a while to download my real email first thing in the morning.
Spamtrap (Score:2)
that would probably catch 99% of them... if implemented correctly. Probably have to account for randomizing of headers and personalizing the messages, but otherwise it should get pretty close.
-Restil
it's actually very easy (Score:1)
Sure SpamCop is great.... (Score:1)
Brightmail does this (Score:2)
What would be interesting is if an opensource/community project took on the same approach; seems like it could be done, the basic idea is fairly simple really.
Postini has a good service for ISP's (Score:2)
My ISP (the one that I use, I certainly don't own it) is beta testing Postini's service. Basicly all mail is sent to Postini, they filter it based on content huristics and send the "good" stuff on. There is a web based area (which can be tailored to give more or less options to the user) where preferences can be set, and "tagged" email can be checked.
While I was participating in the beta, I was really "promiscuous" with my email address. Now that the test is over, I'm sorry. Pricing is really quite resonable. I've been told that the cost per user per year (for an ISP of about 150k) is around $10.
I'd pay $100 a month (Score:2)
Depends on how my inbox goes spamfree. (Score:2)
Suppose Congress passed a law extending "open season" on spammers to 24-7, 365 days a year, and allowed for the payment of a bounty for every spammer hide turned in.
I'd chip in a few bucks a month, probably along with every other user in the country. That'd be several million bucks a month. I dunno, what's a spammer worth? $50 for the bullets and maintenance of the weapons, plus disposal costs?
Only problem is where we'd dispose of all the spammer carcasses. The EPA would be all over our ass. Spammers smell bad enough when they're alive.
But if we're just talking about some sort of filtering to get rid of the spam in the mailboxes, not a red cent. Spam is a problem that can only be stopped at the source -- stop the spammers, whether through legalized culling, jail time, or just plain beefing up ISP abuse desks (umm, and Broadwing and Genuity going bankrupt ;-) and the spam goes away.