UK bans spam messages

[Admiral]

BBC News

....
EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.

Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.

The EU legislation leaves it to each member state how to enforce the legislation, as long as the enforcement is "effective".
....

Hope other countries will follow.

[K6-III]

And how would one enforce spam coming from other countries?

[The PIT]

With superplod who'll fly to the offending pc user and beat him/her up.

[Brian Ellis]

This will be totally useless: all the spammers will do is to alias from another country.

In my opinion, the only way to handle this matter is to have a global agreement whereby ISPs are forced to filter spam out before their customers can download it. This IS possible, even today, with something like 99.99% accuracy, with a combination of Bayesian filtering, analysis of From and To addresses and numbers of identical body messages, detection of things like text in the same colour as the background (used to fool filtering), analysis of html attachments and so on. The down side is that 1 in 10,000 real messages might get eliminated, if only automatic methods are used: this could be improved by doubtful ones being scanned manually, but the legal base for this would need to be established.

My ISP has started in this direction and is already cautiously eliminating about 50-60% of spam, the more blatant ones. My Bayesian filter effectively handles the rest with >99.85% accuracy, false positives/negatives confounded.

If ISPs were forced to eliminate spam before delivery, there would be neither spam nor spammer.

[Wombat]

This is far from useless. If you can prove that a citizen is profiting from spam, then you can take them to court. It's already working in Washington state.

Also, having ISPs filter out the spam is NOT a solution. Spam makes up about 1/2 to 2/3 of all e-mail. Even if it is not delivered to a customer, it's still taking up the ISP's bandwidth, and you, the user, are still paying for that overhead. Spam costs you serious cash.

[Brian Ellis]

I agree that spam is costing me money, but if spammers knew that their rubbish was not being delivered, they would soon stop their activities. IMHO, this is the only solution.

Please tell me how many spammers have actually been stopped in WA and how many haven't and how these figures are known. Of course, one could mention that the company that has made it easy for spammers just happens to be there, in Redmond

[GT98]

Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.

Hmmm in articles written by the American Press it says the oppsite....Europe and Asia

[Ribbit]

I wonder what the Asian press says then....

[Brian Ellis]

I would say the vast majority of asexual spam, including that promoting Viagra, comes from the USA. That offering us the delights of being a peeping tom on any of the four sexes, may certainly be E. European or Asian, although not exclusively. Although this is distorted by my ISPs pre-filtering, I've receive a small load today of just 20, as filtered by POPFile. 6 of these are offering me money (loans and mortgages), all from the USA; 4 are offering "pharmaceuticals and health treatments", all from the USA; 2 are offering to change my proportions, one in the groin area and one my mammary glands (heaven forbid!), both from the USA; 2 are offering porno delectations, one from Austria and one from Kenya; one is from a real US business-related site; the rest are miscellaneous and almost unidentifiable. However, this may not be representative of a totally unfiltered lot.

[Admiral]

...on any of the four sexes,

What would be the fourth one ?

Only spam I get is from some guy that sells Rollex watches online, some people promoting movie CD/DVDs and some computer shop, all local.

[Fluff]

Just make everone pay $0.001 per e-mail sent, that will reduce SPAM!

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by Admiral
What would be the fourth one ?

M looking at F
F looking at M
M looking at M
F looking at F



Maybe you forgot the first

[Admiral]

Was thinking M, F and what other combo would get out of them other than SM

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
I agree that spam is costing me money, but if spammers knew that their rubbish was not being delivered, they would soon stop their activities. IMHO, this is the only solution.

I think you're absolutely wrong here. Spammers exist because it costs them next to nothing to send out their advertisements.

Cost is infintesimally close to zero, and profit is a good bit more than that. Suppose 98% of the spam is blocked, well 2% of current profit is still more than zero, so they'll continue to spam. In fact, they'll probably spam EVEN MORE to compensate, since the increased volume costs them nothing - it sure costs the rest of us though.

[Wombat]

California just banned spam effective 1/1/04