Post by kas on Nov 18, 2010 22:04:29 GMT -5
Stop Helping Spammers!
www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/email#stop
Now they offer a service, but I just wanted to point out the cause of spam and how it can be prevented (with current tricks spammers do) and why other methods haven't worked 100%.
Their site is here:
www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/email#stop
Would you open this email?
From: Evil Spammer <liar@criminal-enterprise.com>
To: You <you@youraddress.com>
Subject: I would like to rip you off.
Of course not. You'd delete it on sight, but only if your anti-spam software didn't get to it first.
Spammers know that. They may be duplicitious, lying cheats, but they aren't (all) stupid.
They know that nobody wants to read the junk they pump out.
They know that they have to trick you into reading it.
They know they have to trick your anti-spam software into letting you read it.
They know that they have to hide their tracks, because once people figure out where they're sending it from, they'll be kicked off and have to start over somewhere else.
That's why the lies in spam emails start long before the sales pitch in the body of the message. When a spammer connects to the email server that handles your mail, they lie about who they are and where they are. They pick legitimate domains at random and pretend to be part of them. They connect through networks of virus-infected PCs to mask their origin.
But that doesn't make sense, does it? Surely we can figure that out, right? All this fancy Internet security and nobody's servers can figure out if an incoming message is a fake?
No, many servers can't. It's not that the means to do so do not exist; they do. There are detailed checks that can be used to determine if a particular message is legitimate or not to a very high degree of accuracy. It's just that they've been turned off.
You see, there are many misconfigured email servers out there on the Internet. For one reason or another, their email doesn't "look right" when it gets where it's going. If their emails get checked, they won't pass.
That means that when there's a problem, there are two ways to make it go away. One is to fix it. The other is to try to get everyone to ignore the problem. For a long time, plan B was the more popular, simply because it's a little easier. The result is a big grey area that spammers exploit to conceal their identity. How do you tell a message that's not legitimate by accident from one that's fake on purpose? You can't.
Together, creating an environment where checks on the legitimacy of email are unpopular and allowing broken servers to flourish are directly responsible for empowering spammers to choke all of our Inboxes with unwanted garbage.
From: Evil Spammer <liar@criminal-enterprise.com>
To: You <you@youraddress.com>
Subject: I would like to rip you off.
Of course not. You'd delete it on sight, but only if your anti-spam software didn't get to it first.
Spammers know that. They may be duplicitious, lying cheats, but they aren't (all) stupid.
They know that nobody wants to read the junk they pump out.
They know that they have to trick you into reading it.
They know they have to trick your anti-spam software into letting you read it.
They know that they have to hide their tracks, because once people figure out where they're sending it from, they'll be kicked off and have to start over somewhere else.
That's why the lies in spam emails start long before the sales pitch in the body of the message. When a spammer connects to the email server that handles your mail, they lie about who they are and where they are. They pick legitimate domains at random and pretend to be part of them. They connect through networks of virus-infected PCs to mask their origin.
But that doesn't make sense, does it? Surely we can figure that out, right? All this fancy Internet security and nobody's servers can figure out if an incoming message is a fake?
No, many servers can't. It's not that the means to do so do not exist; they do. There are detailed checks that can be used to determine if a particular message is legitimate or not to a very high degree of accuracy. It's just that they've been turned off.
You see, there are many misconfigured email servers out there on the Internet. For one reason or another, their email doesn't "look right" when it gets where it's going. If their emails get checked, they won't pass.
That means that when there's a problem, there are two ways to make it go away. One is to fix it. The other is to try to get everyone to ignore the problem. For a long time, plan B was the more popular, simply because it's a little easier. The result is a big grey area that spammers exploit to conceal their identity. How do you tell a message that's not legitimate by accident from one that's fake on purpose? You can't.
Together, creating an environment where checks on the legitimacy of email are unpopular and allowing broken servers to flourish are directly responsible for empowering spammers to choke all of our Inboxes with unwanted garbage.
Now they offer a service, but I just wanted to point out the cause of spam and how it can be prevented (with current tricks spammers do) and why other methods haven't worked 100%.
Their site is here:
www.nearlyfreespeech.net/