Hey All
I'm gonna throw in a little rant from a totally different point of view
hehe
<RANT>
First off.. Spam does work.. thats why they use it. A friend of mine about 7 years ago mass emailed about 60 000 people about his teen website (by that I mean his personal homepage/community for teens). He was getting a couple hundred thousand hits per month for about 4 years after that.. even though he never advertised it anywhere else.
Kata hangs his head for knowing a spammer (but he hates spam not too
Anyhow.. with that addressed, I think the government needs to remove legislation against spam because face it - its the ethical publisher that gets burned. As a almost-former E-publisher the risks you face everytime you mass email a bunch of jokes to your double opt-in mailing lists is enormous. So many people email me saying they never subscribed and I'm spamming them. Luckily for me I just have to forward them a copy of their intial subscribe request and the problem goes away.
Most spammers out there are fairly technically competent, and not dumb enough to try mass emailing through their ISP or webhost. Its painfully easy to turn your computer into a high speed mailing device. Requiring no external mail server - it remotely communicates other servers IDing as an legit internet server and sends the email directly, without using someone elses mail server. I had to use one once when my mail server went down. Sent 3000+ emails in about 15 mins on a 36kb dialup connection. So by ISPs being really strict on how many emails you can send at a time, it doesn't do much to stop anyone that really intends to spam. (This is the same way all those viruses work.. they dont use any ISP).
If anything there should be laws made to allow hacking of spammers
lol
I know of a few cases where spammers have been totally taken out by hackers who receive their UCE. Maybe a lttle primitive of a method, but I personally beleive the internet isn't a medium that should be moderated. Leaving it open to a bit more of taking things into your own hands isn't so bad. Noone gets hurt if they actively look to protect themself, and everyone learns from it.
Thats what the term hacker actually means - someone who picks something apart to make it better. Crackers are the ones that the media calls hackers giving a bad impression to the world. I would personally identify with a hacker - I take things apart to make them better. Crackers simply destroy things or deface them, they have no concern as to how they get in (aka script kiddies), they just want to destroy.
By leaving the internet with less rules, it means that no one corporation gets the authoritative say on what happens. How would you like it if MS rule the net? I personally would probably leave the whole computing industry.. it would be a loss. By letting everyone learn, and help each other and use a little common sense there isn't much to be lost. By common sense, I mean that instead of sueing an ISP for not blocking your children from seeing porn on the net, teach them some discernment so that they know what a link to a bad site looks like, and honestly you have to be pretty dumb to not realize that! Besides.. we do have back buttons for honest mistakes. Instilling a basic morality of what is right and wrong is so much more effective than trying to block what they see. When I first started on the net I was in grade 6. My parents have never installed any kind of blocking software for what I see. Maybe its because they know I can get around it without much effort, but the point still stands. They didn't install it because they know I had a bit of common sense and a moral viewpoint that I shouldn't be looking at that stuff.
Re: anonymous email - its impossible to ban that. Its almost an oxymoron. You simply just have to create your own email server on the net, spoof your IP and voila your invisible as soon as you take it offline! Probably should break this rant up with a little bit of humour - one of my profs told us in my very first computer class that we shoul dnever send him death threats. Apparently some student sent one (wanting a higher grade). The stupid computer science student made up a fake hotmail addy etc and sent it from there, not realizing that he was logged into the computer at the school with his username and pass. 15 mins later they were all having a little chat
.. it takes a few brains to use anonymous email
The whole spam issue is just a repetitive war - spammers get around filters, then filters get better and it repeats.
Spam is already looked down on by society so its in not real benefit for them to be known publically so its almost already as if they are outlawed. Making it officially illegal only will result in a few cases, the rest of the spammers are still goign to do their thing!
To conclude: I think spam should not be made illegal, and I'm very much opposed to laws regarding how the internet works or what it can be used for. The only effective laws are those that limit what we see in a country - child porn etc. They are enforcable if a case is ever found. Spammers can hide, because they connect and run. Perves have websites that are always up and runnig - they can be found and hunted down.
I'm pushing for an open internet, where everyone can take their own online justice into their own digital hands. A little common sense goes a long way. We have grown so comfortable in America assuming that we are safe wherever we go. Take a look at other countries.. they watch their step, they think before they act. People are more cautious and use a whole lot more common sense!
</RANT>
/me wonders what hes started
- Ed
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