Is spam really a problem?

I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
why?

I've been on the net for nearly 20 years. I'm
active on numerous mailing lists. I post to 
usenet. I have a website. In all cases 
(except this post) I use real email 
addresses.

Nevertheless, spam does not create a big problem
for me. Perhaps 10-15% of my home email is spam,
(much less at work) and I identify and kill it 
in less time than it takes me to sort out the 
junk from my snail mail.

Don't get me wrong; I don't *like* spam. But 
for me it's a minor problem, certainly not
worthy of legal remedies. I'm willing to suffer
a certain level of foolish annoyance gladly 
in return for liberty.

The only point at which spam is more than a 
minor irritation is when sexual spam turns up in
my home mail or in inappropriate news groups, 
and then only because I have young kids, who
I don't wish to be exposed to porn until they
are more mature (if you flame me on this, you're
missing the point of this post, and will be
ignored).

Masque.

PS: I'm slightly anonymous in this message
because I fear that if I used my real name,
some jerk would decide to sign me up for
every spam source on the planet, to prove
a point.

M

Tim May wrote:
>
> But *many* things eat up our valuable time. Doesn't mean government action
> is the answer.

Show me one place in the email you replied to where I mention that I would
favor
any sort of governmental action in terms of passing anti-spam laws.  I did
mention
contracts between ISP's and subscribers at one point, but did you see anything
about someone passing laws?
 
> If you use ISDN and pay minute charges to download an article from me, for
> example, and you feel it was a waste of your valuable time, should my
> article be illegal?

If I am forced to pay for something that I don't want to buy, it is a theft
of my money.  If you send me garbage without my asking for it, then you're
wasting my money.  If I subscribe to a mailing list and don't want to see
your messages, it's a different story since I have to take other steps to
not see what you post.  In other words, in one case you are targetting me
with spam, in the other, I want to receive cypherpunks minus one user, but
that user isn't directly targetting me.
 
> If someone sees your name somewhere and does the same thing (sends you a
> letter), should this be illegal?

Ditto as the response above.  I will accept any non commercial, non moral
pushing message.  i.e. there are those who like my home page and email me
to tell me so.  There are those who hate it and tell me so.  There are
those who ask for help, or offer help.  No problemo there.

But there are those who see the upside down pentagram and send me email
stating I'm in the wrong religion.  Thems I consider spam because they
try to pursuade me to their belief system.
 
> (I threw this last point in because some have argued that there is an
> implicit agreement that mail on a mail exploder will not be objected to, as
> it fits the charter, blah blah. So I removed this implicitness by speaking
> of someone who writes a letter.)

Makes no difference what you throw in.  A mail exploder that auto subscribes
everyone on the planet without their consent IS a source of spam.  A mail
exploder that sends email to those who wish to receive it is not because there
was consent.
 
> If _content_ is not a criterion for spam, as Costner and others have noted,
> then "wasting Ray's time" is even less of a criterion for what spam is.

Spam is unsolicited broadcasts.   Pure and simple.  If you spam me with
a scheme to make you money, it's spam.  If you spam me with "Jesus loves you"
it's a spam.  If you spam me with chain letters promising whatever or warning
of great virus plages, it's still spam.  Content is a valid criterion for spam
and so is consent. It's the unwanted content of these messages that makes
them unwanted.  If they were useful to the recipient, they wouldn't be unwanted
hence would not be spam.

Problem is every dickhead who buys into the "Make Money Fast on the Net
By Spamming" theory has dollar signs in his eyes and thinks his message
is the most valuable, most useful, most cuddly lovely bit of info on the
planet and that he's doing everyone a service by shoving it down their 
unwiling throats.
 
> Look, there's just not going to be a simple government answer to "unwanted
> communications" that doesn't do serious damage to our liberties.

I posted a very nice technological way to deter spam, and you go and read
governmental interfearence in it.  READ the message you reply to before you
respond to it.
 
> Technological/economic approaches are the only way to go.

No shit.  And that's what I posted earlier.

-- 

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|  Ray Arachelian    |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

Ray has widened his definition of "spam" even more.

At 12:22 PM -0800 2/19/98, sunder wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>>
>> But *many* things eat up our valuable time. Doesn't mean government action
>> is the answer.
>
>Show me one place in the email you replied to where I mention that I would
>favor
>any sort of governmental action in terms of passing anti-spam laws.  I did
>mention
>contracts between ISP's and subscribers at one point, but did you see anything
>about someone passing laws?

You've mentioned that spam is theft. If the courts agree with you on your
definition of what spam is, then pretty clearly the legal system gets
invoked. (But to forestall any confusions in the courts, the anti-spam
sentiment being discussed by Ray and many others is likely to lead to
specific legislation. Sadly.)


>> If you use ISDN and pay minute charges to download an article from me, for
>> example, and you feel it was a waste of your valuable time, should my
>> article be illegal?
>
>If I am forced to pay for something that I don't want to buy, it is a theft
>of my money.  If you send me garbage without my asking for it, then you're

"Theft." Call the cops.

>But there are those who see the upside down pentagram and send me email
>stating I'm in the wrong religion.  Thems I consider spam because they
>try to pursuade me to their belief system.

So, your definition of spam has now been expanded to include someone who
sends _you_ (you, not thousands, not tens of thousands) a message you don't
care for.

Well, not much more I can say here.

--Tim May


Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377   | black markets, collapse of governments.

Tim May wrote:
 
> Ray has widened his definition of "spam" even more.

No, my definition is the same as it always was.  Maybe you didn't realize
how wide it was.
 
> You've mentioned that spam is theft. If the courts agree with you on your
> definition of what spam is, then pretty clearly the legal system gets
> invoked. (But to forestall any confusions in the courts, the anti-spam
> sentiment being discussed by Ray and many others is likely to lead to
> specific legislation. Sadly.)

It is my definition, if others agree, that's their business.  I'm not asking
the courts to do shit about it however.
 
> "Theft." Call the cops.

It is theft, and I do call the cops, or rather in this case the ISP's involved.
The problem is they can't do much as the messages are sent from throw away
accounts.

> So, your definition of spam has now been expanded to include someone who
> sends _you_ (you, not thousands, not tens of thousands) a message you don't
> care for.

Show me your spam filters.  Do you not have at least one individual's name
in that list whose messages you route to a folder of trash or delete outright?
I seem to recall that was the case quite a while back with a certain "Doctor".

Indeed, even you make decisions about what is or isn't spam based on WHO sends
it.  In this case, you, not thousands, not tens o thousands of others is making
a decision on what is or isn't spam because you don't care for it.

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|  Ray Arachelian    |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

Tim wrote to Ray:
> You've mentioned that spam is theft. 

Spam is plainly not theft.  Littering or pollution is a better analogy.

> PS: I'm slightly anonymous in this message
> because I fear that if I used my real name,
> some jerk would decide to sign me up for
> every spam source on the planet, to prove
> a point.
> 
> M

Too late. Someone subscribed you to cypherpunks
already.

Cheers,
Julian.

At 9:33 AM -0800 2/18/98, Anonymous wrote:
>I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
>the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
>why?

Indeed, discussion of "what to do about spam?" periodically consumes all of
the main lists I'm on. Discussion of spam is worse than the actual spam.

>Nevertheless, spam does not create a big problem
>for me. Perhaps 10-15% of my home email is spam,
>(much less at work) and I identify and kill it
>in less time than it takes me to sort out the
>junk from my snail mail.

Same for me. I can delete commercial advertisements ("spam") in seconds.


>Don't get me wrong; I don't *like* spam. But
>for me it's a minor problem, certainly not
>worthy of legal remedies. I'm willing to suffer
>a certain level of foolish annoyance gladly
>in return for liberty.

Well said. "Be careful what you ask for."

Anti-spam bills are already wending their way through Congressional
committees. If passed, an FCC-like authority over the Net will have been
granted.

(Though probably ineffectual, given the use of offshore sites, throwaway
accounts, etc. The real effect will probably be to usher in an era of
mandatory identification for account opening, which is pernicious, and
various other tracking and surveillance systems.)


The only  "spam" which really bothers me is/are _mail bombs_, where
hundreds or even thousands of messages fill my mailbox. I've been hit twice
with these attacks. And a friend of mine received 25,000 messages from one
sender...he sued and won a substantial settlement from the employer of the
guy who mail bombed him.

But such attacks will likely not be affected by anti-spam laws anyway.
Perps can use sites in other countries, beyond the reach of the laws. And
remailers. And so on.

"Be careful what you ask for."

--Tim May

Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377   | black markets, collapse of governments.

Tim May wrote:

If:

>Indeed, discussion of "what to do about spam?" periodically consumes all of
>the main lists I'm on. Discussion of spam is worse than the actual spam.

then:

Discussion of net abuse is worse than net abuse.
Discussion of theft is worse than theft.
Discussion of, hey, abortion is worse than...

Hear Mister Free-Speech talk, and shudder.

.marek



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The local radio station just played a soundbite explaining that the 
"Anthrax" was not viable, and could not have been used to develop a 
weapon. They went on to state that the perpetrator was a "disgruntled scam 
artist whose scheme to make money off the Internet had failed."

If they can't get anything out of the bio weapons angle, there's always 
the 'net angle. The news goobers are catching onto the concept of "object 
re-use."


On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Eric Cordian wrote:

> The FBI informant who orchestrated the capture of the recent "Anthrax
> Terrorists" turns out to be a man twice convicted of felony extortion.
>  
> He presently markets something called "The AZ-58 Ray Tube Frequency
> Instrument Prototype" which he advertises as being able to somehow
> purify the body of bacteria and viruses.
>  
> Sounds like a rehash of Radionics.
>  
> You may view the contraption at its very own web site,
>  
>          http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/jmckenzie
>  
> -----
>  
>  
> LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Far from planning an anthrax attack, William Leavitt
> Jr. was involved in a bizarre deal to buy a $2 million germ-killing
> machine from an FBI informant who double-crossed him, Leavitt's
> lawyers said Friday.
>  
> Leavitt was described by his attorneys as a well-meaning, if gullible
> scientist.
>  
> He and Larry Wayne Harris, both microbiologists, were arrested in
> suburban Henderson Wednesday outside a medical office and charged with
> conspiracy to possess and possession of a biological agent.
>  
> His lawyers said Leavitt was operating under the assumption that what
> Harris had was Anthrax vaccine, which is legal and safe.
>  
> The FBI was awaiting tests Friday to determine if it was vaccine or
> material grade anthrax, which is potent enough to kill thousands of
> people.
>  
> Leavitt is married with three children and runs his own
> fire-protection business. The FBI says he also owns microbiological
> laboratories in his hometown of Logandale, Nev., and Frankfurt,
> Germany.
>  
> His criminal attorney, Lamond Mills, said the FBI's informant, Ronald
> Rockwell, was trying to ``scam'' Leavitt into buying a germ-killing
> machine.
>  
> ``When he couldn't scam 'em, he went the other way. He became a good
> guy for the FBI,'' Mills said.
>  
> Leavitt's business lawyer, Kirby Wells, said the machine was called
> the AZ-58 Ray Tube Frequency Instrument Prototype, and was hyped by
> Rockwell in glossy brochures as being able to flush the body clean of
> bacteria and viruses.
>  
> ``It looked like a bunch of bells and whistles,'' said Wells, who said
> he saw a picture of the machine. ``What made my client believe there
> was substance to that thing, I don't know. I wish I did.''
>  
> A promotion on the Internet has a bold headline: ``ANTHRAX,'' and goes
> on to say the AZ-58 ``can treat large numbers of people at the same
> time.''
>  
> ``Has the greatest health discovery in history been suppressed?'' the
> ad asks.
>  
> Leavitt was close to buying the machine in a $2 million deal, but
> wanted to test it before making a $100,000 down-payment and arranged
> to fly Harris to Las Vegas about a week ago to help, said Wells.
>  
> Leavitt believed that Harris was transporting anthrax vaccine, Mills
> said. But Rockwell told the FBI that Leavitt described it as
> military-grade.
>  
> On the''NBC Nightly News'' Friday, Rockwell reiterated that Leavitt
> and Harris said they had military grade anthrax.
>  
> ``They lied on what they were going to do,'' Rockwell said. ``It
> scared me so bad.''
>  
> There is no phone listing for Rockwell in the Las Vegas area. His
> attorney has not returned calls to The Associated Press.
>  
> Leavitt and Harris were arrested Wednesday night after the FBI, with
> Rockwell's help, tailed the men to a medical office in suburban
> Henderson. Authorities removed a cooler and petri dishes from the
> office, and sealed the men's beige Mercedes in plastic before
> transporting it to an Air Force base.
>  
> Leavitt, 47, and Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, are being held
> without bond.
>  
> In an affidavit, the FBI said described Rockwell as a cancer research
> scientist who was convicted of felony extortion in 1981 and 1982. But
> the FBI has vouched for his credibility, saying he came forward
> without getting a deal and was a ``citizen performing his civic
> duty.''
>  
> Harris' attorney, Michael Kennedy, said Thursday that Rockwell's
> credibility ``is something we're going to look into.''
>  
> It was unclear how Leavitt, a Mormon bishop with strong political
> ties, got hooked up with Harris, an alleged white supremacist who has
> been plugging his self-published book about germ warfare.
>  
> The FBI has said Harris met Rockwell last summer at a Denver science
> conference, while Leavitt's attorneys said they believed Rockwell got
> the men together.
>  
> Mills said the results of the FBI tests will determine if they remain
> united in their defense. ``If the tests come back non-toxin, there is
> no case,'' said Mills. ``If it comes back military grade, then whoa,
> time out, that's not our fault. We separate from (Harris)
> completely.''
> 
> -- 
> Eric Michael Cordian 0+
> O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
> "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
>  
> 
>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <34eeebcf.17966504@gryzmak.lodz.pdi.net>, on 02/21/98 
   at 12:33 AM, eristic@gryzmak.lodz.pdi.net (Marek Jedlinski) said:

>Tim May wrote:

>If:

>>Indeed, discussion of "what to do about spam?" periodically consumes all of
>>the main lists I'm on. Discussion of spam is worse than the actual spam.

>then:

>Discussion of net abuse is worse than net abuse.
>Discussion of theft is worse than theft.
>Discussion of, hey, abortion is worse than...

>Hear Mister Free-Speech talk, and shudder.

Oh PLEASE! You can't really be that much of a moron can you??

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
Tag-O-Matic: Don't be held back by yesterday's DOS!  Try today's OS/2!

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Anonymous wrote:
> 
> I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
> the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
> why?

It eats up your valuable time.  You might not see it for what it is, but
it is an interruption of normal service.  It's annoying as having your
pager go off durring sex and having to call back your boss instead of
ignoring it.  (Presume you can't shut off your pager.)  It takes away
from the continuity of life.

Further, some of us use ISDN to get their email and transferring the
extra junk adds to the pay/minute connections.

There are nice technical solutions to this.  If sendmail didn't transport
things unauthenticated it could be done, but at a cost in CPU cycles on mail
servers:

Have every sendmail server use a PK scheme to talk to every other
server and authenticate the connection.  Have every sendmail server accept
mail only from those whose key is verified.

Anonymous remailers would still work and these could be set up to accept
unauthenticated email, but then use their own credentials to send out
the mail, so it will auth with your servers.  Also have the anon remailers
not accept too many messages from one source within a certain time frame to
different destinations.  i.e. if I send out 50 messages to cypherpunks in
one hour, that's cool.  If I send out 50 messages to 50 different users
everywhere within an hour, it's not cool.

This way the spamming bitches would be forced to still register domain
names and send mail from them, and you can have your mail server block
them as needed and be certain of where they came from.  If you have
problems with anon users, you can block unsigned (and/or signed but
unrecognized) messages from anon users, while still allowing signed
messages of anons you know well and accept mail from.  

[Note: I said known anons, this prevents Spamfuckers from genning
10 billion key pairs to spam you with.]

(I won't get into persistant anonymous identities and reputation capital
as that's been beaten to death already.)

IMHO with such a scheme it will be possible to reactivate email relaying
again, it just requires everyone to gen their own DH or RSA keys.  The
mailer software can handle this for users, so it's of little issue.

The other side of the coin is that ISP's should include AUP clauses that
state if you spam, you pay extra $$$ and make it enforceable via contract.
Say, you pay shit.net $10/month for access, you'll have to sign a thing
that says if you use your account to spam, you'll have to pay $500,000
or something just as prohibitive, or release their real world info, 
(or whatever can be legally used to deter the fuckers.)

If any ISP's don't do this, or allow way too many spams, they get
filtered from your servers.

Mind you, this won't totally stop spammers, but it will make it hard 
for them.  Food for thought.  IMHO, with such fascist anti-encryption
laws today, this is unlikely to take off. :(

OTOH, the idea of pledging not to buy anything from spammers helps in
the long run, but there are enough sheep out there that will accept
any crap thrown in their mail.  Further, spamming them back helps.
If they put 800 numbers on the spam, call them and talk to them for
hours and waste their time.  If they put fax numbers in there, send
them orders with fake addresses.  If they put up net addresses, block
them from your router and/or flood them with extra traffic if you can
or want to.  If they put up PO addresses, subscribe them to many weird
magazines by sending in the fall out cards with their address on
it.  (seek legal advice before trying these, I'm just ranting and venting.)
:)

-- 

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|  Ray Arachelian    |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

On Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 06:33:07PM +0100, Anonymous wrote:
> 
> I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
> the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
> why?

The way I see it, the problem with spam isn't that it takes too much
effort to delete them, but that it discourages useful advertisement
through email. Email could be a very efficient way for companies to send
valuable information to potential customers, but the incentives are such
that virtually all unsolicited commercial email are of very low value
and are deleted without being read. 

If you like game theory, you might want to search the cypherpunks mailing
list archive for a game theoretic analysis of the spam situation.

At 12:47 PM -0800 2/18/98, sunder wrote:
>Anonymous wrote:
>>
>> I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
>> the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
>> why?
>
>It eats up your valuable time.  You might not see it for what it is, but
>it is an interruption of normal service.  It's annoying as having your
>pager go off durring sex and having to call back your boss instead of
>ignoring it.  (Presume you can't shut off your pager.)  It takes away
>from the continuity of life.

But *many* things eat up our valuable time. Doesn't mean government action
is the answer.

>Further, some of us use ISDN to get their email and transferring the
>extra junk adds to the pay/minute connections.

If you use ISDN and pay minute charges to download an article from me, for
example, and you feel it was a waste of your valuable time, should my
article be illegal?

If someone sees your name somewhere and does the same thing (sends you a
letter), should this be illegal?

(I threw this last point in because some have argued that there is an
implicit agreement that mail on a mail exploder will not be objected to, as
it fits the charter, blah blah. So I removed this implicitness by speaking
of someone who writes a letter.)

If _content_ is not a criterion for spam, as Costner and others have noted,
then "wasting Ray's time" is even less of a criterion for what spam is.


Look, there's just not going to be a simple government answer to "unwanted
communications" that doesn't do serious damage to our liberties.

Technological/economic approaches are the only way to go.

--Tim May

Just Say No to "Big Brother Inside"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^3,021,377   | black markets, collapse of governments.

Wei Dai wrote:

> The way I see it, the problem with spam isn't that it takes too much
> effort to delete them, but that it discourages useful advertisement
> through email. Email could be a very efficient way for companies to send
> valuable information to potential customers, but the incentives are such
> that virtually all unsolicited commercial email are of very low value
> and are deleted without being read.

Those of us outside of the Microsoft Marketing Machine have a different
opinion.  Frankly, I do not want to make Bill Gates's latest advertising
gimmick any more 'efficient' nor do I want to be his 'potential customer'.
I have had just about enough crap from Microsoft, which is why I deleted
JunkOS version 95, and use Linux instead.

When I open up my email and find twenty pieces of spam, like most people
I start hitting the delete key.  Last week I got a call from a friend...
"Didn't you get my email?"  "uh... no..."