Spamming

[Fred Brown]

Just heard on TV that Earthlink is taking 100 well knowen spammers to court and sueing them. The News says they have sued spammers before and won. Do you think this will stop spammers from spamming? Is there a day coming when spamming will be illegal? Maybe this is the future of spamming-hacking into other computers to send spam. Well, I think it's time to stop the spammers.

Freddy

[mmelby]

From one who manages a network for a large company ( including email ), I hope this is the beginning of the end for spammers. The amount of resources and non-productive time that spam creates is nothing short of amazing.

I also do not think that spammers will be the next hackers.

[Abtronic]

haha, this has been said so many times it's almost sickening, but i think it applies here:
"I believe the correct term is crackers"

Sure, it would take a 'hacker' of sorts to write the required programs etc, but the companies that profit from the spam couldn't even be compared to the dreaded script kiddie.
Spammers are spammers, and always will be spammers

[steve.milner]

Spamming will end when i'ts not cost effective.

I think spam only requires 0.2% of all spam emails to result in a 'purchase' for it to be cost effective.

So to stop spam:

1) The 'purchase' percentage needs to be lower than the cost effective level. This can only be acheived by encouraging everyone to never buy services from spam email.
2) Increase the costs of sending spam. This can be done by individuals or companies sueing the spammers, reporting all spam to an appropriate body (I would reccomend spamcop) and in this way increase the closing of accounts & access.
3) Making the spammers personally responsible for the spam they send out. I support the publishing of personal names & addresses of the directors of companies propagating spam and wherever possible I write to them. (I generally send an invoice for my time for dealing with the spam (My rates are very reasonable £150 per hour or part thereof).

Steve

[DeadAddict]

Hackers are better than spammers because hackers don't send out pointless e-mail's they are too busy finding holes in operating systems and letting the administrator know about the hole and how to patch it.

[IFixDaWindoze]

On the bright side.......between applying M$ patches and managing spam filtering I have no shortage of work. I use Nemx Powertools for Exchange and it is very useful for blocking spam.