Lazy network operators

Sat Apr 17 22:39:36 UTC 2004

>Spammers are users too. You can't spell "abuser" without "user." You
>are inherently trying to diminish the power of the abuser users. No
>spam mitigation solution can ever answer, "yes," to that question
>without the qualification that at least some users, the abusers, will be
>disempowered. The equation will always come to balancing how hard you
>hit the spammers versus minimizing the collateral damage. Or it's another
>classic example of security versus usability.

But speaking of usability, email becomes IMMEDIATELY unusable if there is a 
technological "anti-spam" measure in place, be it something client-side 
like spamassassin or another RFC implemented server-side, that prevents 
even a single wanted email from getting to you. Especially if you are, for 
example, sitting at home on the phone with another person saying "Email me 
that file, again" and it's not going anywhere. At that point, email is 100% 
dead.

Rob Nelson
ronelson at vt.edu

Rob Nelson
ronelson at vt.edu