[Asrg] Re: Spam, why is it still a problem?

On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 09:25:06AM +0000,
 Craig Cockburn <craig@siliconglen.com> wrote 
 a message of 42 lines which said:

> why is it that there is so little visible progress on this list and
> generally regards implementing a solution that actually works and
> which can be easily accessed by the average Internet user? (and even
> better open source).

If we are interested only in technical solutions, they exist and they
are quite good: using only free software, I receive almost no spam in
my default mailbox. This is something that we often forget:
technically, we are quite good against spam.

Unlike Bill Gates, I do not claim that the problem is solved because:

1) These technical solutions have a huge price (machines, software,
engineers). The days of a small PC handling all the mail for a small
university are long past. There is also the false-positives problem,
however small it is.

2) We cannot promise that we will be able to keep the same level of
success in the future since spam continues to evolve.

> 1. Why so little progress appears to be happening

The average Internet user should not be too impatient. In the last ten
years, the amount of spam ending in my default mailbox was extremely
stable and this is in itself a big technical achievment. We perform
well in the arms race.

On the non-technical front, things are much more complicated, for
reasons that have been well explained here (by der Mouse or Tom Petch
or Dave Crocker).

> 2. What needs to happen for spam to be largely resolved as a problem

I dare a prediction: spam will never be resolved. Like any other
crime. Burglary will never be "solved", neither murder or fraud.

> 3. How far we are down this road and when we might expect a solution?

Stop expecting. Learn to live with social problems like we live with a
lot of other social problems. Only in engineering people ask for
perfect solutions. The real world does not work that way.

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