Unbelievable Spam.

Mon Feb 2 22:40:10 UTC 2004

On 2 Feb 2004, Paul Vixie wrote:

> the spammers have nothing to fear from you, or us, or me, or anybody.  with
> the incredible number of bottomfeeders and antivirus companies polluting the
> econsystem with their own various get-rich-quick schemes, there's no way to
> tell the difference between good and bad traffic, good and bad intent, good
> and bad providers, etc.  the spam/antispam battleground is all just mud now.

Everyone should be glad for the Internet making all of us feel like rich
and famous.  A lot more people want our attention (and money) than we wish
to deal with.  And this is not only the spam problem - the
technology-related privacy and identity issues are merely the other side
of the same phenomenon - the rich & famous had to fight with gossips,
paparazzi and various con artists for as long as there were money, power
and fame.

And because rich and famous had this problem for a long, long time, they 
managed to devise some solutions.  So everything we do about "cyberage" 
problems like spam is going to be some automation of those old solutions.

Call me elitist, or old-worlder, but my preferred way of dealing with it 
is "choose who you are associating with".  Introductions.  In newspeak - 
whitelists.

--vadim