S-P-A-M, the long view
by Ross Lasley
Most of you probably have noticed that in the last 6 months or so the sheer volume of junk messages has dramatically increased. The ISPs have responded with filtering software and yesterday the 8000 pound Microsoft Gorilla added their rather famous legal department to the list of people filing suit against spammers.
We've seen AOL's promises of spam death, some pretty clever Earthlink commercials, and some dedicated people working on projects that do have a genuine chance of helping the problem - like lumos.
None of this will solve the problem. Don't get me wrong - all of this work is good and important, no question it needs to happen. The point being missed is that this is all really just a band-aid on a system that is fundamentally flawed.
As one of the people who was around to dial into compuserve with my 600 baud modem using a bogus account being passed around on BBS's - I can tell you the system we built has got an awful lot wrong with it.
No matter how many roadblocks you put up you just can't claim to be fixing the road.
What most people don't understand is that the basic way in which the email system is built makes real spam prevention impossible. Imagine that every house had a telephone (not a stretch, I know) - now imagine if that phone was both free and there was no way to tell who was calling. Think about that for a second - the ability to tell who is calling and the fact it costs money to make a call are two critical pieces of the system without which the phone system might fail.
What it would be like for prank callers and telemarketers - heaven.
The big issue with a new road, of course, is who is going to build and pay for it. This is an infrastructure issue and, as much as it makes me grimace, the US government should be involved with setting standards. We don't allow commerce to determine bandwidth issues for cell phone companies - if we did none of it would work together.
I'd like to see a forward thinking politician propose a new email infrastructure focused on what will be needed ten years from now. Determine the standards; make sure the tech needed to make it go is available via open source - and then maybe step back and watch the hero votes pour in? cool.
 Tech Tip: Stop S-p-a-m Now!
by Jared Daubert
Tired of being overwhelmed with spam? Sure, all of us are. But before you lose hope, your hair, or all of your sanity, here are some things you should know.
Most people use Outlook Express. It's free with Windows , and hey, everybody likes free stuff, right? But did you know that you can set up filters for your incoming e-mail? Yes thats right, you may never have to be annoyed by spam again.
In most common e-mail clients (like Eudora,which we use here at the KISS office, Outlook, and Outlook Express) there is built-in filtering technology. What this means, for instance, is that when you receive an e-mail with a subject containing a common S-P-A-M word (like that little blue pill we all know about), you can have that message moved directly to the trash bin without ever seeing it.
This doesnt mean that the e-mail is lost in the abyss of seemingly endless bits and bytes; its still there in your trash bin, but it's out of plain view. For example if your good friend John Doe happens to send you an e-mail with the subject "I just got the best mort*gage on my house!" and you have a filter to trash e-mails containing the words "mort*gage" the e-mail would be gone and you'd never know the good news.
Now, assuming your eyes aren't glazed over from all of this gibberish, here are the instructions on how to get started with filtering your e-mail. As always if you have any questions feel free to e-mail me at jared@kisscomputing.com.
Outlook Express | Eudora
|
 FREE Tip Sheet |
|
"3 Keys to a Successful HTML Newsletter"
Before you start sending electronic newsletters to your
customers, make sure you read this first!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Download
your FREE
