Subject: Why Spam is a Problem

From: "Bill Cunningham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 07:52:02 -0400

Perry,
    Here's something you might want to keep in mind. Just before I left
telemarketing, New York had just passed the statewide "do not call list". It
was my understanding that this was for calls originating in NY. When it
comes to laws that are reserved to states all other states must be in
compliance, for example, all 50 states have an agreement to recognize the
drivers licenses of the other 49 states. If the NY "do not call list" is
working for you great! But if you do get a call from outside of NY, be sure
to ask for written proof of being put on the "do not call list", so if
you're called again you can prove that you asked to be taken off the list.

---

From: "Brian Bisaillon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 14:30:04 -0400

Accountability has to be addressed at the source. It is not the fault of the Internet Service Provider that a malicious user made a personal decision to send spam. However, it is the responsibility of every Internet Service Provider to ban spammers from using their services and to not allow easy ways for users to signup for those services. Maybe Internet Service Providers should even be given the right to press charges against such malicious users by law.

>>> "Bill Cunningham" <[email-masked]> 08/16/02 12:56PM >>>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Bisaillon" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: Why Spam is a problem

> I don't see how filtering messages helps with bandwidth issues associated
with spam. You still have to receive spam before you can filter it out and
this is what uses up bandwidth. Spam needs to be stopped at the source
before it even enters a receiving network. That source is the service
provider and the fact is that those service providers don't take
accountability for the service they provide. Electronic mail is an
ungoverned medium and there is no accountability built-in and this is what
promotes spam. I don't understand how laws can help when systems on the
Internet cross many different jurisdictions accross the world. Also,
changing the protocol or adding extensions results in an enormous amount of
infrastructure change. Keep in mind, a "no soliciting" extension may not be
a solution in another country where they have not adopted any laws to back
it up.
>
> The Internet is an open and interoperable medium. You can't change the
design because it's too late. The fact remains that user A can still send a
message to user B and that user B has to receive that message before he/she
can filter it out unless user B's network blocked out user A's network to
begin with. Otherwise, there would have to be some way that spam messages
would have never been sent from user A in the first place. So the question
is how do you prevent spam before it happens?
So the responsibility should be placed on lower tier ISPs, what about the
main backbone like MAES.

---

From: "Brian Bisaillon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 14:41:37 -0400

Again I will say that there is no technology quick fix to an accountability problem. It's not the fault of the ISP if a user personally decides to spam. However, it's the ISPs responsibility to ban that user from using the service in a malicious way. Simply passing it off saying "I get too many requests!" is a lame excuse. Web mail is a bad thing too and I'll tell you why. If you allow anyone to signup for an e-mail address online (and I'm targeting services like hotmail, etc. here) then you promote spam because you don't take the steps to regulate users using your service. You should take the appropriate steps to ban malicious users and charge them with an offence if there is such a law for it. You have to stop spam at the source. ISPs have to be accountable for the service they provide, users have to realize that they can get into serious trouble with the law, they should also have to sign an agreement so that they know about the terms of use. Terms of use displayed on web!
 sites like hotmail, etc. are useless because how many people do you think actually read those and abide by them? Accountability is the root of spam...

>>> "stanislav shalunov" <[email-masked]> 08/16/02 02:11PM >>>
Frank Solensky <[email-masked]> writes:

> Just posted on slashdot: a Bayesian approach to the problem that reports
> to have rates of 0.5% on false positives and 0% false negative:
> http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html 

Nice short-term approach.

Unfortunately, easily defeated with just appending (perhaps as an HTML
comment) a long innocent-looking fragment (e.g., a 30KB piece from a
random book).

Further, in its *present* form, where unfamiliar words are given 0.2
spam probability, easily defeated by just adding a lot of randomly
generated `words' like 9nscS9Ft, iuiF0kKw, 6AycPEbU, nsUdjGeP, etc.
Given enough of these, the Bayesian probability formula will declare
even a piece of mail that consists of a sales pitch for a pornographic
web site have a probability of being spam that is arbitrarily close to
0.2.

-- 
Stanislav Shalunov		http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/ 

"Which one is worse?  Both are worse."		-- V. I. Lenin