Spam Control Considered Harmful

Wed Oct 29 01:22:59 UTC 1997

At 07:53 PM 10/28/97 -0500, Barry Shein wrote:
>
>Steal resources, annoy people to no possible benefit to them, bombard
>them 24 hrs/day with come-ons for porn and transparently fraudulent
>business claims and pyramid schemes and chain letters etc and they
>won't be happy.
>
>It's not that hard to understand: Pissing people off is not a great
>way to do business. In fact, it doesn't work.

I agree with the fundamental principle, however, some people are making
money at UBE without regard to who, or how many people they piss off.  The
money is being made in selling software to do spamming, or running services
that spam.  At AGIS, we've seen it all.  Address mungers, relay hijackers,
bcc bombers, etc.

It has always been our intent to stop this kind of abuse of technology.
Albeit, our position and motives were misunderstood, our end has always
been clear.

UBErs exploit the weaknesses in the email infrastructure of the net.  I
still believe that until we can find technological solutions the the theft
of service and forgery issues, spam as we know it will continue.

Phil Lawlor
President
AGIS
Voice - 313-730-1130
Fax   - 313-563-6119