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General discussion

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Dec 6, 2003 7:44PM PST

Discussion is locked

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NT: Inflation would soon bump the costs to .05 .......
Dec 7, 2003 12:24AM PST

..

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Universities, charities, military, government and nonprofit would be excempt.
Dec 7, 2003 9:45PM PST

The only ones who would pay would be the casual user that sends a lot of email a day, businesses which could easily absorb the cost and SPAMMERS.

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I'm curious Mark ...
Dec 8, 2003 12:27AM PST

... it seems futile to even discuss this option unless there were an international law and governing body ruling the internet mandating such a policy. That's not going to happen, or do you somehow see it as possible?

I have one throw away account that is used to subscribe to anything in the way of newsletters and the like. It is Yahoo and even with the 100+ messages I get per day, just the Yahoo spam filter works very well on the corresponding SPAM. Those specific emails they may accidentally identify as spam have long since been identified as stuff I want. Only problem is that I gotta check in and dump the Bulk folder more often than I might otherwise do to just check up on newsletters and the like. Not a real biggie for me.

I haven't gotten spammed EVER in my .edu email addies or my ISP addy because I don't use them for other than work and a very small number of transactions. Even friends and family are given a different addy -- be that a secondary one for the ISP that can be easily changed if corrupted or another Yahoo account. Even since Yahoo changed to paid POP, it's easy to manage them using YahooPOPS. I only get spam from some disgruntled soul here at SE to the addy that I just use for my personal communication when I pi$$ someone off Happy And that is also dealt with by a filter.

Anyone who has a genuine problem with SPAM really ought to spend a little time reading through the threads where folks discuss their personal means of dealing with it. There's no way the US or world is going to be able to regulate this here internet in the manner you propose, and I for one am just not keen on paying more to try to enforce SPAM prevention when it can be rather easily controlled at my end for little or no money.

Evie Happy

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Here's some info
Dec 8, 2003 12:58AM PST

From Randy Cassingham (of This is True, Heroic Stories, and The True Stella Awards fame).

http://spam.abuse.net/spam/

I like the idea of the aliasing sites where you can generate random addies for every occasion, and delete them just as easily, but they cost money. Still, that's money a LOT better spent than the idea presented in this thread, IMO.

Cindi

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Aliasing sites ...
Dec 8, 2003 1:25AM PST

... I think Keith Marcotte has mentioned sneak email on more than one occasion and it looks pretty cool.

http://www.sneakemail.com/

I've thusfar not had to go this route, it does seem to offer a means of figuring out just who spam originated from if you are particular about providing the addy to only one party, etc. I guess I'm just too lazy to be bothered, so put them all to a throwaway account. If that ever got unmanageable I would have to deal with it then. So far, even after three years of unbridled use, it remains manageable. There are really only a few newsletters and the like I susbscribe to, and could change the email addy they send stuff too in a matter of about 10 minutes. Most ISP's offer more than one POP email account, so if you always use a secondary account, this can simply be deleted and changed.

I'm with you Cindi. Any money I might pay for these services, filtering software, etc., is much better than paying to send my own email out!

Evie Happy

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(NT) You're right, I have mentioned it a time or two :-)
Dec 8, 2003 12:47PM PST

.

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Re:Here's some info
Dec 8, 2003 2:08AM PST

Visit another.com in the UK. It's $20 a year and can give you access to thousands of addies, and has also been around a few years.

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Re:I'm curious Mark ...
Dec 8, 2003 3:23AM PST

Evie: I also have a free Yahoo account that I use as a public mailbox for people to respond about my website. It's spam filter works pretty well and ocassionally mismarks some email that I have signed up for as spam. I also use one shot mailboxs for stuff I know will generate a lot of spam. My personal mailbox even though I have never used it except with family and friends is also getting spam. But the problem is I'm losing a lot of email that I know i should get. I don't know if the sender is having problems or some server forwarding the packets went down or if there is so much spam that it's clogging the system. I do know that email used to be more reliable than snail mail but not any more. Fred Langa is doing an email reliability study and I'm waiting for his results.

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I guess I'm still just curious ...
Dec 8, 2003 3:39AM PST

... how you think a per-email charge could be implemented. Pretty much it would have to be universally mandated or there would still be much for ISP's to gain by offering unlimited email plans and the like.

I don't give out my primary ISP or official work email addies to anyone. I have a Yahoo addy for personal friends/family too. Initially I established it when I was switching ISP's and didn't want to have to change my email addy for everyone. But it has worked well to keep it that way.

Yahoo has been very good at not filtering newsletters I have identified as "not spam" -- anything important, such as an online purchase confirmation or the like goes to a secondary ISP addy now instead of the throw-away because I accidentally deleted a few of these I would like to keep. So far that ISP addy remains clean, but I can always just delete the account or change the address if not. I download all the email off the server and have the copies on my hard drive, so it's not an issue as it is not used as a future notification email. BTW, I also use Poco for an email client. If I do go "filter free", I like the ability to just view messages on the server and download only the ones I like then delete the rest. I get a whole lot of email alerts for various university items mixed in with real correspondence with students and other faculty. I find manually sorting this to be the best bet.

Evie Happy

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Why pick on them? What did they do to you?
Dec 8, 2003 1:21PM PST

Any entity that is exempt from the email tax would be a target for trojans and hackers so the spammers could set up spam relays on the "free" servers. That's assuming that the spammers care about who pays (or doesn't pay) the email bills.

Read about the business model for virus-spam

MessageLabs threw out an estimate that 2/3 of the spam is now from hijacked PCs. At $0.01 per email, you're hitting the ignorant consumers in the pocketbook. On the bright side, they will now have an incentive to learn about computer security and governments will have a new charge for the spammers, fraud under $xxxx.

IMO, charging per email is unworkable and won't stop any spam anyway. Mandating that all ISP's must scan emails for viruses would put a minor crimp in the spammers' business model but they'll issue a new variant more often to create more windows of opportunity when the new virus isn't detected by filters yet.

I prefer my method - giving out a separate sneakemail address out for each online registration. If my address gets out, I know who is to blame (and can immediately shut down the address). So far I have received zero (0) spam from those addresses. I wish I could say the same thing for my hotmail account (99.9999% spam - it would be 100% but I get the occasional message that my account is full - of spam!).

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(NT) Message has been deleted.
Dec 7, 2003 9:52PM PST
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(NT) Message has been deleted.
Dec 7, 2003 10:14PM PST