SPAM
I just came across something interesting.
It seems the US Federal Trade Commission, as part of its efforts to gather data for reports on the problem of Unsolicited Commercial Email, has asked Americans to forward every SPAM email they receive to uce@ftc.gov.
While this is a nice idea, it has one important problem: Bandwidth.
See, it doesn't make sense for me to forward the emails I filter out, because I currently delete those directly from the server without ever seeing them. My email client does this automagically. In order to forward a message, I have to download the whole thing, put new headers on it, and upload it back to my server. Not only do I have to use my precious bandwidth to transfer the message twice, but I have to transmit the whole message, rather than, in the case of deleting from server, only the headers and a small command to delete the message.
Granted, some messages do get past my filters, and for those, this will be a good thing, because I can forward them off and feel as though I'm accomplishing something with the time I waste deleting the sneakier ones.
Anyway... Rules-based filtering simply isn't 100% efficient. Every rule you make, someone's going to circumvent. I don't have a solution for the problem of SPAM... unless it's a law allowing, without penalty, SPAM victims to crack/emailbomb/send-virii-to/bludgeon-with-blunt-instruments the idiots who SPAM them. But, that will never happen. :)
It seems the US Federal Trade Commission, as part of its efforts to gather data for reports on the problem of Unsolicited Commercial Email, has asked Americans to forward every SPAM email they receive to uce@ftc.gov.
While this is a nice idea, it has one important problem: Bandwidth.
See, it doesn't make sense for me to forward the emails I filter out, because I currently delete those directly from the server without ever seeing them. My email client does this automagically. In order to forward a message, I have to download the whole thing, put new headers on it, and upload it back to my server. Not only do I have to use my precious bandwidth to transfer the message twice, but I have to transmit the whole message, rather than, in the case of deleting from server, only the headers and a small command to delete the message.
Granted, some messages do get past my filters, and for those, this will be a good thing, because I can forward them off and feel as though I'm accomplishing something with the time I waste deleting the sneakier ones.
Anyway... Rules-based filtering simply isn't 100% efficient. Every rule you make, someone's going to circumvent. I don't have a solution for the problem of SPAM... unless it's a law allowing, without penalty, SPAM victims to crack/emailbomb/send-virii-to/bludgeon-with-blunt-instruments the idiots who SPAM them. But, that will never happen. :)