30 MB of spam
Jan. 8th, 2008 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI logged on today to be deluged with 30 MB of spam from some halfwit doubtless hoping for some worthless footnote in history as being the moron who clogged email around the world for a day.
It is moments like this that you see with great clarity how ineffective are the common approaches to spam abatement. What people don't realise is that they are not only useless, but they can be easily misused to prevent legitimate but inconvenient emails from circulating. One of the servers I get email through has an automated spam filter. I don't have any say over what gets blocked, and I've always been a little suspicious about that. Recently I received email from a friend active in Amnesty International wondering why emails he'd sent me about the corrupt Kenyan government have been bouncing. I narrowed the problem to a link mentioned in the emails. I was unable to receive, or send(!) any email containing the link to the news website
http://allafrica.com
It reminds me of the stupid anti-porn filters that block sites about protecting yourself against breast cancer.
Solving spam is easy. All we need do is verify the source of the email the same way web pages are routinely verified for packet damage. If the sender is verified then forged email (the overwhelming mass of spam) instantly disappears. The remaining miniscule fraction can be blocked by your own filters or laws against spammers.
Why on Earth do we continue to search for solutions in easily corrupted rule-based systems?
It is moments like this that you see with great clarity how ineffective are the common approaches to spam abatement. What people don't realise is that they are not only useless, but they can be easily misused to prevent legitimate but inconvenient emails from circulating. One of the servers I get email through has an automated spam filter. I don't have any say over what gets blocked, and I've always been a little suspicious about that. Recently I received email from a friend active in Amnesty International wondering why emails he'd sent me about the corrupt Kenyan government have been bouncing. I narrowed the problem to a link mentioned in the emails. I was unable to receive, or send(!) any email containing the link to the news website
http://allafrica.com
It reminds me of the stupid anti-porn filters that block sites about protecting yourself against breast cancer.
Solving spam is easy. All we need do is verify the source of the email the same way web pages are routinely verified for packet damage. If the sender is verified then forged email (the overwhelming mass of spam) instantly disappears. The remaining miniscule fraction can be blocked by your own filters or laws against spammers.
Why on Earth do we continue to search for solutions in easily corrupted rule-based systems?