RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam (was [Yet another] article on spam)
"Howard Roth" <hroth@tngi.com> Sat, 24 May 2003 18:01 UTC
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Reply-To: hroth@tngi.com
From: Howard Roth <hroth@tngi.com>
To: asrg@ietf.org
Subject: RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam (was [Yet another] article on spam)
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Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 10:53:53 -0700
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Addressing SHRED - I don't think introducing artificial costs in the distribution of SPAM is the correct direction. It's like making the Income Tax permanent. Hmmm. Joking aside, if I wanted to set up a legitimate business on the Internet I think that paying for a list of opt-in email address is cost enough to market. As the cost of legit names will be much higher when you inhibit rogue SPAMers. And I don't believe in not selling lists if they are made of people who want to be sent messages about discounts on Viagra or whatever. The other night I received a call from a person claiming to be SBC. In fact he/she (there seemed to be some confusion as to the gender of the caller when I asked to speak to a supervisor) was from a third party telemarketing firm representing SBC. This call is no different than SPAM, other than that there is a steeper inherent cost in telemarketing versus an email marketing effort. I think you need to look at the other methods of marketing and determine the similarities and differences and attack the problem from an angle that will not cost much and will be enforced easily. Television commercials in my mind are no different than SPAM, but I can flip the channel or turn the TV off. I don't need the TV to conduct correspondence or business activities. Here the TV SPAMers pay to broadcasting time. The same goes for Radio SPAM. Direct mail is no different than SPAM, it does have a impact on me. When the Mail SPAM clogs my mailbox, the postperson often rips my magazines stuffing them in. There is cost to mail this SPAM. The remedy is to throw the Mail Spam out. Its other impact of course is the environment, which is a big issue. FAX marketing is still alive even though there is legislation to stop it. It's not easy to fight a FAX SPAMer. There are state and federal laws, but no one willing to go to bat unless money is involved. I did respond once to a FAX SPAMer with the threat of suing unless they stopped SPAMing and paid me $20.00 for my time and effort to get them to stop. They sent me a check.... Never cashed it though, I felt guilty being hard on a company that didn't really want to abuse the consumer, but lacked tact. And as mentioned these alternative SPAM attacks are limited because they actually cost the sender money, whether it's postage, people power, or phone charges. So what can we learn about Email SPAM from these other marketing efforts? Email SPAM at least doesn't impact the environment. I don't know how many trees I've tossed out. It doesn't use my own fax toner or paper. So that's good. But unlike TV I can't turn it off either. My approach to Email SPAM would be addressing a way of turn it off. I see this as being done via a technology solution and legislation. Just like the Phone SPAMer who calls me up, I want to be able to say, "take me off your call list" and be assured that this will happen. Right now it ensures that the SPAMer has a live fish and ups the price of the email address being sold. SO you get more Email SPAM. But with the bait and switch SPAM mentality how can this be enforced? Legislation will not do any good unless the culprits reside in the US. And then the cost of prosecuting or suing thousands of SPAMers makes it impractical. What about assigning a secure certificate to each Email user (email address is part of cert) that is attached to a service provider or IP address. The certificate is sent with the message (attached to what part is to be determined). If the certificate does not match the service provider then the message is rejected outright (by SMTP?- or pre-SMTP module). A SPAM message is forwarded to the service provider (abuse account?) who would cut the service off based on receiving x number of complaints. This can be automated quite easily. For those that host their own mail servers the certificate can be attached to an IP address. The message is checked that it came from that IP address. Like domain names, but only charging a nominal fee of say $0.99 for each certificate would be the support for a certificate provider. It cannot be expensive for the user community. Could a scrupulous SPAMer send messages from China without a certificate? No. Could they fake a certificate? This would need to be made difficult, but by having an authority with the only key, you can ensure it is unlikely that a SPAMer will make up a valid certificate - ISP/IP combination. We addressed SPAMers from an ISP. What else is there? What if the SPAM is be sanctioned by a company's mail server? There would be an IP associated with it. Complaints would be sent to a specific body ( such as the certificate authority, FTC, Direct Marketing Assoc. etc.) who in turn would add the IP to a black list. If a valid Black list is maintained then there may be no need to revoke certificates. I'm afraid I only came up with this idea as I've been writing this response and I'm thinking there may be some merit to this concept. Some feedback would be welcome. Howard Roth -----Original Message----- From: asrg-admin@ietf.org [mailto:asrg-admin@ietf.org]On Behalf Of Paul Judge Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 1:10 PM To: 'Yakov Shafranovich'; 'asrg@ietf.org' Subject: RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam (was [Yet another] article on spam) > -----Original Message----- > From: Yakov Shafranovich [mailto:research@solidmatrix.com] > Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 3:20 PM > To: asrg@ietf.org > Subject: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam (was > [Yet another] article on spam) > > > At 06:13 AM 5/23/2003 +0900, Shannon Jacobs wrote: > > >However, with email we have the potential to do much better if we > >devise the proper economic model. Right now the spammers are > forcing us > >to spend additional money handling their spam. More machines for > >filtering. Lawyers to write more laws. Why can't we turn that around > >and spend money to offer better email services? > [....] > >We still need to filter email, but we should be using those > filtering > >cycles to enforce OUR interests on the advertisers. > [....] > >There are various anti-spam email systems out there, but so > far all of > >the ones I've looked at expect me to pay blackmail > "insurance" charges > >to get rid of the spam. This is a WRONG economic model, and > I will NOT > >be blackmailed. > > Perhaps we can start a discussion about the economic models > of spam control > and various systems possible. Below is a quote from section > 1.7. of Dave > Crocker's draft on spam control mechanims > (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-crocker-spam-techconsider-01.txt) , >we can start off discussion with this: >-------snip----- >Postal mail imposes a fee on the sender for each message that is sent. Such >a fee makes the cost of sending significant, and proportional to the amount >sent. In contrast, current Internet mail is very nearly free to the >sender. Hence there is interest in exploring "sender pays" email. > >One form of sender-pays is identical to postal stamping. Another entails >"retribution" to the sender, taking the fee for their posting only if the >recipient indicates they were unhappy to receive it. For both models, it is >not clear that it is possible to retroactively fit the necessary mechanisms >to Internet mail. Its complete absence from the current service and the >existence of anonymous and free email services may provide too much >operational inertia. It is also not clear who should receive the fees or >how they should be disbursed. >-------snip----- One such system was presented at the ASRG meeting at IETF 56. The system is called SHRED: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/03mar/slides/asrg-8.pdf. If we are going to start a dicussion about cost-based systems, then we should start we the thought that has been put into this proposal. According to our taxonomy, these approaches can be considered a form of consent token or a response of charging after spam detection depending on the use. One potential for such a system is within a consent-based communications framework. For example, consider that some category of email is between individuals and are based on some implicit or explicit consent. Another category is mailing lists and newsletters based on explicit consent in the form of opt-in. Another category may be bulk mail where consent can be purchased as mentioned in Shannon Jacobs's email as "If you know of an anti-spam email system that will block any advertising UNLESS the advertisers pay MY price for MY time, then please tell me about it. I'll sign up and consider my spam problem solved." This is similar to other areas of life where some subset of people are willing to pay for some amount of your attention such as bulk postal email or other advertisments. _______________________________________________ Asrg mailing list Asrg@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg _______________________________________________ Asrg mailing list Asrg@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg
- RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam … Paul Judge
- RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam … Eric D. Williams
- RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam … Howard Roth
- RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam … Yakov Shafranovich
- RE: [Asrg] Economic methods for controlling spam … Kee Hinckley