Complaint of the week: Ebay abuse mail (slightly OT)

Tue Aug 5 08:27:26 UTC 2003

> And so we should do nothing?

Absolutely not, and perhaps I should have been clearer in that respect.

There needs to be more of an understanding of why people spam and
what can be done to tackle that issue head on, its a social/educational
issue.  Do you think the people spamming the Nigerian scam do it
because its a good laugh? No they do it because they think they
will make money from it, some of the are succesful, even to this
day, but its now such a common message that its almost a net legend.
Education of these people to show them the err of their ways would
deal with the problem.

And typically thats a more expensive problem to solve and
requires resolve from politicians and lawmakers, who unfortunately
are overwhelemed with other "more important" issues.  Until there is
a much more hand in hand joint social / technical attack on the root
causes then we will always have spam. I've tried many of the technical
solutions and they end up shooting you in the foot more times than
they are worth, although I do agree a more stronger mail transfer protocol
should be developed but not just to deal with spam issues alone.

Its akin to the way that most [all?] governments have abysmally failed 
to make any progress on dealing with illegal narcotics. The publicilty
campaign formally known as "The war on drugs" was focused on
attacking the suppliers and the manufacturers, when the root cause of
the problem is with the demand of the people who use the drugs in
the first place.

We're now off topic and you don't need to send me an email Susan!

Regards,
Neil.