Jason’s Random Thoughts

Okay, I’ll admit it.  Regardless of how much time I spend on the internet, I just don’t understand the nature of spammers.  I currently have half-a-dozen email addresses that are used for various purposes.  Aside from the addresses I’ve set aside exclusively for use with my employer and PDA, every account is harassed with 40+ spam emails per day.  On top of this, my sites are hit with dozens of spam attempts daily, with the last few weeks showing a four-fold increase in numbers.  Because of this increase, today was the day j2fi.net hit the 8,000 mark with Akismet.  Upon seeing this number, I was left with a single thought:  WTF?  Haven’t they learned?

This question is obviously one that will not be answered to my satisfaction anytime soon, as it’s obvious that spammers are alive and well, and will not suffer a collective extinction at any point in the near future.  What really grinds my gears, though, is how blatantly obvious this digital crap is.

Just look at this screen capture I took before removing these garbage links from my filter.  I’m at a loss for words when it comes to crap like this.  Not only is this obviously spam, but it’s painfully obvious!  What ever happened to the spam messages that at least made you think twice about its validity?  What ever happened to the posts that at least appeared to be written by a semi-literate speaker of the language?  Not only is there no challenge to identifying crap comments as spam, but there’s no reason to even waste our breath checking Askismet.  It seems that spammers have reverted back to the same type of blissfully blind bad behaviour.

But what can we do about it?

I love finding solutions to problems with software, but I don’t think this is an area that should be solved with logical rules and complex pattern recognition algorithms.  Instead, I think this is something that should be relegated to the realm of vigilante justice systems.   Perhaps every community in the world could create their own lynch mobs and conduct witch hunts, where witches are substituted for spammers.  If the Spanish Inquisition taught us anything, it’s how to strike the fear of a semi-organized group of thugs into everyday citizens.

Putting Limits on Global Communication?

Of course, this is probably not an option that governments would willingly support.  But how about a certificate and cap system?

My email has been blocked by Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo!Mail in the past due to some bad behaviour from a server sharing the same IP as mine at my local provider.  In order to correct this, I purchased a dedicated IP and then signed up with an email certification program at MSN.  Within 12 hours of going through this process, I was able to successfully send emails to these accounts again.  So why not put this to work a little more?

I’m thinking this could be done in a few stages.  First, all email servers need to have a verified trust certificate (locked to a specific IP) and be configured to automatically reject mail sent from untrusted servers.  From here, email accounts will be given a cap of 100 global messages per day (internal emails [those within a company] will be exempt to this rule, of course).  If a user needs to send more than 100 messages per day (legitimate email marketers, bloggers who email comment updates, people who send RSS via email, etc.) would need to get their email caps raised and agree to have their messages run through a heavy-duty spam-filter.  Should their messages be considered spam, the emails will be blocked until verified by a real person as being legit, then they’ll be released or otherwise eliminated.

Would something like this work?  Maybe in an Orwellian society.

Spammers, those nameless and faceless individuals who are partly responsible for the lag on the interwebs, would eventually find a way around these blockades, and people would not be happy with the limitations imposed on an open and free communications system.  Most of us are not criminals, and we’re not soliciting all kinds of crap to hapless individuals who have no concept of the dangers involved with ordering drugs over the web, or sending personal information and a fat check to help our good friends in South Africa or Nigeria smuggle money out of their country in exchange for a cut of the profits.  On top of that, we already have enough restrictions and limitations in the real world, so why would we want to introduce more rules and regulations to the online realm?

No … unfortunately there’s not much that we can do to deal with spammers and their crap messages outside of using spam filters and keeping a watchful eye on suspicious messages.  That said, I should be thankful to spammers because they let me check the status of my “delete” key on a daily basis.  If it weren’t for them, I don’t think I would use that key half as much
What do you do to combat spam?  Have you also had just about enough of this pesky nuisance?

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