{"id":1246,"date":"2008-07-28T17:57:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T21:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2009-01-25T20:20:54","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T01:20:54","slug":"check-box-reply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/28\/check-box-reply\/","title":{"rendered":"Check-box reply"},"content":{"rendered":"

Found on Seen On Slash<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Your post advocates a<\/p>\n

(x<\/strong>) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante<\/p>\n

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)<\/p>\n

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
\n( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
\n( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
\n( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
\n(x<\/strong>) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it
\n(x<\/strong>) Users of email will not put up with it
\n( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
\n( ) The police will not put up with it
\n(x<\/strong>) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
\n(x<\/strong>) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
\n( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
\n( ) Spammers don’t care about invalid addresses in their lists
\n( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career or business<\/p>\n

Specifically, your plan fails to account for<\/p>\n

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
\n(x<\/strong>) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
\n( ) Open relays in foreign countries
\n( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
\n( ) Asshats
\n( ) Jurisdictional problems
\n( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
\n( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
\n(x<\/strong>) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
\n(x<\/strong>) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
\n(x<\/strong>) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
\n(x<\/strong>) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
\n( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
\n( ) Extreme profitability of spam
\n(x<\/strong>) Joe jobs and\/or identity theft
\n( ) Technically illiterate politicians
\n( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
\n( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
\n( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
\n( ) Outlook<\/p>\n

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:<\/p>\n

(x<\/strong>) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
\n( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
\n( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
\n( ) Blacklists suck
\n( ) Whitelists suck
\n( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
\n( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
\n( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
\n(x<\/strong>) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
\n( ) Sending email should be free
\n( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
\n( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
\n( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
\n( ) Temporary\/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
\n( ) I don’t want the government reading my email
\n( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough<\/p>\n

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:<\/p>\n

(x<\/strong>) Sorry dude, but I don’t think it would work.
\n( ) This is a stupid idea, and you’re a stupid person for suggesting it.
\n( ) Nice try, assh0le! I’m going to find out where you live and burn your house down!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know why I find these things funny, but I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Found on Seen On Slash: Your post advocates a (x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used… Continue reading Check-box reply<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,203],"tags":[46,66],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-internet-technology","tag-humor","tag-slashdot","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-k6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":573,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/07\/15\/spam\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":0},"title":"Spam","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"You gotta give 'em credit for trying. Here's a sample of some memorable spam emails I've noticed in the past few days.","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1557,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/12\/17\/can-spam-act-is-5-years-old\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":1},"title":"CAN-SPAM Act is 5 Years Old","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"So it's been 5 years since the CAN-SPAM act was introduced. Yet my inbox is still flooded with spam (I have to use 2 different spam-filtering services to keep it from being overwhelming - and even then stuff still gets through). An article on Slashdot asks the obvious question: what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":520,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/06\/02\/spam-this\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":2},"title":"Spam This","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Spam is a serious problem. For example, one of the user's here at StarKeith.net shut down their email address here because they were getting so much spam. Unfortunately, the spam kept coming - filling the account past it's quota and blocking up the mail server's emergency queue (or \"buffer\").","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1533,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/12\/06\/holiday-spam-tricks\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":3},"title":"Holiday Spam Tricks","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There was a brief period about a week ago where the amount of spam I was receiving (in the multiple unrelated email addresses I have) suddenly dropped. Yay! But, alas, the spam has come back - with a vengance. One in particular that seems to be slithering by most spam\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/12\/mail-reply-all.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":613,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/09\/03\/comment-spam\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":4},"title":"Comment Spam","author":"Keith Survell","date":"September 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"What is it about that attracts so much comments spam? Almost every day I have to moderate a new comment as \"spam\" for that post. What's so special about it?","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":745,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2006\/05\/16\/comment-spam-redux\/","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":5},"title":"Comment Spam, Redux","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"During the last week I've gotten over 100 comment spams submitted to this blog - and almost all of them have gotten past my spam-blocking tools... this does not make me happy.","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}