Is the net about to choke to death?

The Sunday Times ^ | May 4, 2003 | Martin Wroe

[goldstategop]

That's true. Its the trickery that makes people even more furious than the fact they received spam.

[InfraRed]

The spam filter at my secondary ISP experienced a glitch this past Thursday. I received 424 pieces of spam at once. Luckily, my mail client polls that mail server via my primary cable connection, else I would probably have been downloading spam for hours.

[snopercod]

My ISP filters all e-mails and holds all "span" for a yes-or-no by me. So far I only delete about five per week, but my neighbor deletes hundreds per day. I attribute the difference to the fact that I never visit porno sites and he does.

[Mike Darancette]

What bugs me more than E-Mail Spam is the pop ups and ads.

Drudge is using something called ads.doubleclick in his HTML that just hangs my computer because it is so slow. Other sites like Intellicast (weather) are using it too.

[goldstategop]

In the new AOL 8.0 Plus there is a fix to shut them off. If you have another ISP and are still getting them, just shut off your Messenger service. You can still get legitimate IMs and all you won't see are pop up ads any more. Hope this helps.

[giotto]

The solution will have to be a technological one,

Not necessarily. Why is spam so abundant? Because it costs almost nothing to send. What if, rather than imposing all kinds of laws, we simply imposed a postage fee on e-mail? For example, it would cost $.05 to send a message and nothing to receive it. How many e-mails does the average person send in a week? I'm probably not average, because I don't send a lot of e-mail, but I'll bet that few people send more than 10 e-mails per day. The ISP could allow each user to send mail at no charge to a user supplied list of people. This would lower the cost considerably. It would be easy to add names to the list. If the user begins to send mail to an unfamiliar address, the program could ask him if he wants to add the address to his list of free addresses, and even if he never plans to write them again, he could add it. There would also have to be safeguards to prevent spammers from illegally using someone else's account to send spam.

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

I AM SICK OF SPAM AND SPAM POP-UPS!!!

I feel better,thanks.

[goldstategop]

Never reveal your passwords to ANY ONE online. 'Nuff said. On AOL, there are counterfeit sites that look enough like official AOL sites that exist for the purpose of obtaining your password. Don't go there and give them the keys to your online accounts.

[alnick]

Go to Drudgereport and then click on View in your IE menu (assuming that you're using IE6) and then select Privacy Report. You will see a list of cookies that Drudge uses. Right click on each one and select "always reject cookies from this site."

That should end Drudge's annoying popup ads for you.

[Brad’s Gramma]

BTTTTTT

[AgThorn]

[AgThorn]

It's not bad with eggs ...

[Hildy]

As a woman, I must ask the question...is penile enhancement THAT big of a business? (Excuse the pun). I get like at least three offers a day.

[goldstategop]

Being a woman the question is what use it would have to you considering your anatomy? I'd hate to think the spammers have already done market research into the possibilities of conquering the sex change market. EWWWWWWWWWW

[gcraig]

I've heard this line before, linked to how difficult these people are to trace, and I've never quite understood it. Some one has to hire these companies to fire off the spam in the first place.

Not exactly. I used to host web sites on a server that I built. I located the server in Tulsa, at my friend's shop. I administered and installed IMAIL and Exchange Server 2000 to satisfy the email requirements of customers. Both email systems were hi-jacked. Script kiddies are relentless. It became impossible to keep up with the software patches, so I gave up. There are alot of servers out there that didn't give up. Those servers are still being hi-jacked.

[mrfixit514]

When I click on view and privacy report when I am viewing this thread I get one that says freerepublic but I also get four more. For example on is arobase.org/spam

what does that mean?

[goldstategop]

Part of the spammers' strategy to take over the Net is to hijack legitimate servers to make sure their malware and spyware gets through. The joke has it if every one stopped coming online tomorrow, cyberspace would filled with nothing but spam.

[JCG]

The net, says Wyatt, is in its “spotty, adolescent phase” and needs to grow up — in particular it needs a global governing body to monitor and legislate for acceptable online practice.

But, of course -- and with Hillary Clinton in charge. Sorry, this cure is worse than the disease.

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[gcraig]

Okay. The problem is that even the sysadmins that patch their systems to keep up with the latest updates from the vendors get hi-jacked.

[Nick Danger]

What if, rather than imposing all kinds of laws, we simply imposed a postage fee on e-mail?

Because it isn't really "simple." Who collects this? How does any server transporting it know the postage has been paid? Remember, you're not dealing with honest people here. These aren't guys with Earthlink accounts. Most of 'em aren't even in the U.S.