spam debate

[CK9]

okay, I think I already know the outcome of this, but I'm going to post it just for kicks:

Should all spam be made illegal?

I'll tell you all my opinion once this actually gets started

[Mez]

U mean like make it a banning offence on the forums

or like a corporal punishmeant offence? j/k

in my opinion repeated spam should be a banable offence; the occasional spam or spam in the right place (spam/test forum) is okay.

we arn't perfect are we? or is it just me who makes mistakes? - dont answer that

[OP2Patriot]

I think CK9 was referring to e-mail spam.

We get spam in snail-mail. We sort through and throw out the spam. We have to do the same for e-mail. Now the question here should be is there so much spam being sent in e-mail that it should be a punishable offense? Some of us here probably do receive more spam in e-mail than the regular mail.

[TH300]

Some of us here probably do receive more spam in e-mail than the regular mail.

thats exactly true for me. (or was before I changed my second email address)
I am totally against spam and agree with those who want it to be illegal.
It simply takes time to delete spam mails all time and I don't have much time.

One reason for spam could probably be advertising, but only if you are on the side of economy, and I ain't. And I have not ever seen a spam mail which actually offered something useful to me.

[BlackBox]

One slight problem. The government can't control internet spam as a whole. (They might try to stop individual spammers in their respective countries but there again, its sort of outside their means)

The reason is because the internet is owned by everyone. Nobody *owns* the internet. so people are free to do whatever they want on it, you can't really stop people you don't have jurisdiction over.

Simplest solution to spam? get a bayesian filter like Spam Assassin or otherwise. It uses a point system to filter spam. for each spamy thing it gets a certain number of points. (Each part is worth different amts. Eg. Fully HTML email might be 2.0 pts. However text that refers to "Nigerian money" might be worth 5.0 pts).
If it goes over the user's point setting it is flagged as spam by the system.

Also the system can learn based on what the user says is and isn't spam.

I do agree with you though, if there was a way to totally stop spam, I'd be for it.

[Leviathan]

I hate SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hooman]

How about insisting on mail protocols that make mail more traceable. Plus, I hear sending spam is illegal in some places. I'm not sure what the penalty is, but just think how fast 1 second of jail time for every spam email sent would add up. And no, you can't really arrest a spam sender from another country, but you could potentially cut down on it but removing the ones from yours.
 

[CK9]

here's the main reason why I think it should be illegal:

Many senders f spam mail send something else first that autoloads upon opening of the mail program.  It reads your address book and relays that info back.  Then, the spammer will use a name from your adress book to send the spam.  That should be considered identity trheft, which is illegal.

[Mez]

If the gov can analyse ur emails, why cant it analyse for spam?
use the points system say and analyse everyones out going mail.
If you get lots of emails about the spam level then flag the user so a sample of emails can be read by a gov personal. If the gov personal percieves all the sample of mail to be spam then block the users email or fine him/her etc. confisacte the users equipment.




 

[CK9]

sweet idea, lmao

[Mez]

it wud only owrk with quite a bit of money/ the gov coming out and telling everyone that they already scan ppls email/(are going to set it up *wink wink nudge nudge* sarcastic voice)

[Hooman]

I highly doubt that happens, at least not effectively on a wide scale. It seems too hard/unreasonable to manage a system that would scan all emails.

[TH300]

If there was a perfect way to distinguish spam from normal email, nothing would have to be done about it. People would just filter out all spam and thats it.
If the government scanned emails, they could never detect all spam and maybe they would even detect non-spam as spam.

[CK9]

if they use the non-real-name factor

[Mez]

TH300 thats where the sample of outgoing mail gets created randomly by the compouter so a real person has to view it and see if it really is spam. if ALL of the mail is spam then the person will be a spammer and needs to be blocked.

Hooman - If the govs are creating cyber squad divisons of the police and want national identity cards then y do you think they wont start to introduce email scanning.

If they wanted they could make it a legal requirement for isp's to scan mail for spam and have the isp's cut spammers off.  However that wudn't work if the spam was sent from diff countries / islands etc..

[BlackBox]

The governments couldnt scan email due to the nature of the internet. It'd also be expensive anyway.

Besides, I think that's bad. I wouldn't want to compromise some privacy just because I dont want to have to delete a few messages out of my inbox.

If you need to filter spam, install one yourself. It's not too hard

[xamlit]

My mother recieves virtually no span and neither do I, for two different reasons. #1 My mom uses a program that whenever a email is sent to an inbox it sends a email back to the sender having them put in a verification code from a picture and then adds them to a safe list... SO... there has to be a real person on the other side... #2 My way of keeping my inbox spam free is by making a new account and not signing up for anything. Like promotions or anything like that. When you create user accaounts at different websites ito access some certain content, 9/10 times they don't share your email address. Don't just go around slipping your email address into everyform.. If you have a unique name like XAMLIT  then you shouldn't have a problem,



Xam,