Laws will never stop spam. The reason is simple. If the US and 90% of the nations of the world create extremely punitive anti-spam legislation, that still leaves 10% of the nations of the world that will welcome spammers. There will always be countries that will welcome spammers, not only as a source of tax revenue, but as a way to annoy the West. Communist China is a prime example. They are too big to be bullied over this. The spam companies are even planning to offer anonymous web sites in those countries, so US citizens cannot be traced, as the source of the spam. You can't stop it with laws.

This is a technological problem and the answer lies in the technology. In fact, several companies are already working on the solution - Spam Filters That Fight Back (SFTFB). The spam filters would quarantine the spam and after the user has verified that there are no good emails in his spam folder, the SFTFB software will analyze each spam, to identify every valid URL and email address in the spam. It will then send a limited number (maybe 10) http requests to the identified URL's and/or the same number of gibberish emails to the enclosed email addresses. If a spammer sends one million spams, he only expects to receive about 1000 replies, of which he can convert 100 to actual sales. If 10% of the addresses that he sends to, has SFTFB software, all set to only 10 replies, he suddenly has to sort through one million replies, to find the 1000 good ones - that is, if his ISP hasn't already cut him off for exceeding bandwidth limits and billed him accordingly. Spam has just become too expensive for that spammer.

Some may claim that it will only contribute to an even more congested Internet. But, many of those people benefit either directly or indirectly from spam. In fact, there would be a very minor increase in traffic and more importantly, it would be very short lived. SFTFB software will not magically appear on every user's system, but will be bought over a period of months and years. The first implementors will be few in number and so will be their impact to the net. But, even in small numbers, some spam lists will be harder hit than others, forcing those few spammers out of business, making room for the next generation of SFTFB implementors. More spammers are forced out and more people buy SFTFB and the process repeats, until there are effectively no spammers left.

Laws can't fight technology. But, we can use technology to negate the undesirable effects of some technology.

AA

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/9069/27503#27503