{"id":391,"date":"2003-02-08T12:23:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-08T12:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=391"},"modified":"2013-12-08T17:00:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T22:00:50","slug":"more-on-spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=391","title":{"rendered":"More on Spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent blogging<\/a>, I supported the idea of legislation creating a “do-not-spam” list, similar do the “do-not-call” list that many states require telemarketers to obey. Now a recent Wired article<\/a> says two states are considering that idea.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

According to the article: “In the losing battle against spam, two states (CO and MO) are considering a novel approach: the creation of ‘do not e-mail’ registries patterned after the statewide ‘do-not-call’ lists that restrict the activities of telemarketers.”
\nIn all modesty, I didn’t think it was novel when I suggested it; I thought it was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

Some of the militant anti-spam activitists don’t think it’s strong enough: “Antispam activists … charge that opt-out lists unfairly put the onus on consumers to remove themselves from spam databases”. Several of the anti-spam organizations are still pushing for a complete spam ban. While I wouldn’t oppose such a ban, I don’t buy their argument against the opt-out list, as long as it’s centralized (statewide or even nationwide). Certainly the existing situation, where spammers claim they’ll stop spamming anybody that asks them to, is useless. For one thing, there’s no enforcement. For another, I do agree that it’s an unreasonable burden for consumers to contact every spammer and say “Stop”. But anybody who’s too stinkin lazy to put his name and address on one<\/b> list, which will be legally binding on all spammers, deserves all the spam he gets.<\/p>\n

And I still think filters are a bad idea and refuse to use them. It’s common to see people brag about how many spam messages their filters are trapping. If I was getting that much spam, I might consider a filter. But by judicious use of technology, I’ve managed to keep spam to a reasonable level; just a few messages per day, and all to addresses that I could easily quit using if the spam level got too high. It’s trivially easy for a live person who knows my name but not my email address to get a message to me (can you say Google?), but more than a little difficult for spambots to suck up a valid email address from anywhere.<\/p>\n

The problem with spam filters is that it’s easy to measure their “false negatives” (how many spam messages slip through), but not their “false positives” (how many legitimate messages get blocked). Unless you look at all the blocked messages, which defeats the purpose of the filter, how do you know you’re not losing important mail? In my opinion, one accidentally discarded message is too many. Suppose that one was Kylie<\/a> offering to drop by with a 6-pack? If a filter threw it away because it didn’t recognize the source, I wouldn’t be able to tell her not to bother bringing any of that lite crap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent blogging, I supported the idea of legislation creating a “do-not-spam” list, similar do the “do-not-call” list that many states require telemarketers to obey. Now a recent Wired article says two states are considering that idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekstuff","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-6j","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}