The Real Solution to Spam
Declan,
Spam could be ended tomorrow, without technological solutions that destroy
the integrity of the email system or require large scale updates across the
entire Internet.
How? Follow the money: every single commercial spam can be traced back to a
business that has to be able to take your money, one way or another, and
thus has some nexus with the financial system; most likely a merchant
account with VISA or MasterCard.
If VISA and MasterCard and other payment services vendors would implement
and enforce an Acceptable Use Policy that did not permit money to be made
from spamming, you can be sure that the merchants wouldn’t quietly look the
other way as their marketing affiliates (and their marketing affiliates, and
their marketing affiliates, and their partners) spammed the rest of us
relentlessly.
The reason that spam is profitable is NOT because of flaws in the email
protocol. It is NOT because of ISPs that harbor spammers. It is because a
lot of *reputable* people and companies make a lot of money off it, and
conveniently don’t look too closely at how it is generated. The Iraqi card
deck spams are just one example of this (the NYT had a GREAT article a while
back that detailed exactly how this process works).
Who makes money from spam? Well, aside from the flood of porn, Viagra, etc.
I see in my spam folder (and every one of those can be traced back to a
business, one way or another): a Holiday Inn franchise; USA Platinum Card
(www.usaplatinumcard.com); whatever company is behind this extended auto
warranty program, http://www.esalez-now.biz/auto2/, etc.
Why do we only talk about technological solutions? Because implementing
such a solution offers the illusion of control, and allows us to pretend
that we’re investing our time and energy directly for our own benefit - what
we have, with the spam problem, is an “abuse of the commons” problem, where
it doesn’t “make sense” for one individual to spend the time and energy to
track down each of these spamming companies and make them pay… therefore,
we all suffer.
I would suggest that if the Internet Service Provider community is serious
about eliminating the spam problem, that they each chip in 10% of the money
they’re spending on system administrators, large scale email systems,
anti-spam solutions, etc. and hire a dozen Internet saavy folk to do nothing
but gather spam, and then follow the money - trace this back to each one of
these vendors, expose them publicly, shame them, attack their support
infrastructure… which is a lot more than simply their ISP… it is their
credit card processor, merchant service vendor, bank, landlord, accountant,
lawyer/law firm, insurance company, phone company, web host, statistics
service, forum provider, advertising agency, etc. … all it takes is
getting one of these entities to cancel an account, and you’ll produce a
reaction. Eliminate the comfort factor in making money off spam, rip off the
blinders, expose the hypocrisy and the lies, and you’ll do far more to
eliminate spam - in ALL MEDIA: email, IM, P2P, etc. than all the
technological solutions ever proposed; at far less expense; in a far shorter
period of time.
I single handedly decimated the get paid to surf cheat scene (also took out
quite a few “WAREZ” sites too) inside of a couple of months a couple of
years back, knocking it down from web sites/forums with 10,000 registered
users and software with thousands of downloads a day to forums with 10
registered users and “cheat” authors quitting in disgust because their
distribution networks had been wiped out and the ego boost from having a
dozen people use their sofware wasn’t enough rewards. How? By doing nothing
more than asking web hosts, and associated entities to enforce their AUPs.
This isn’t particularly complex stuff. Why no one in the Internet industry
has seriously pursued this, I don’t know.
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt
