Is there a technical solution to SPAM?

Tue Jul 29 13:24:29 UTC 2003

Anyone who believes that SPAM can be solved by technical means should try 
googling one of the following:

sms spam
i-mode spam
IM spam

It should be clear that spam is really a social problem, not a technical 
one and therefore the solutions will be found in the social, political and 
legal spaces, not in network engineering. Some combination of education 
and training, new laws, arrests and public trials will be needed to get 
rid of it. 

I'm betting that we get the biggest bang for the buck out of education and 
training. Part of it will come from teaching people network etiquette, 
part from teaching them that spam is not a way to make money, and part of 
it from teaching website owners how to provide effective advertising so 
that website ads can dominate the cheap mass advertising space and 
displace the spammers.

In any case, I suggest that we should ban all future discussion of SPAM 
and spammers from this mailing list since it is not related to network 
engineering or operating an IP network. 

-------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dillon
Capacity Planning, Prescot St., London, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672    Internet: michael.dillon at radianz.com
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493    Fax: +44 20 7650 9030