Hear hear! Elaine gives it to the people who put Google ads on their personal web sites.
--Nat
Re:vs. Spam
rob_au on 2003-11-03T01:43:39
Excellent point pudge.Sadly one thing which often seems to be missing in the discussion as to how to tackle spam the fundamental understanding of the issue at hand - Spam is an issue with consent, not content. It doesn't matter if the unsolicited email message received offers me a better deal on telephone costs or a herbal alternative to viagra - The issue at hand is consent. I may choose to receive information from my telephone provider about pricing offers and updates or indeed information about alternative therapies available for purchase from a local health store, but I certainly do not want such information thrust upon me from a hundred different sources. The important factor determining whether an email received is indeed spam is the element of consent in the communication.
Until such time that permissive based systems become more widely accepted and deployed, much of what we do to combat spam is phyrric in nature. In the meantime, I fear that the employ of content filtering and server-based blacklists serves to only narrow the difference in content, style and source of legitimate and illegitimate mail. The result will be either greater false positives or greater false negatives depending upon the nature of the content filter employed - This of course opens another avenue of discussion, off-topic however from the original post and thus I curtail my post at this point
... (It should be noted that I do work for a company involved in the development of a challenge-response type system, but that all the opinions expressed in this post are wholly my own)
Re:vs. Spam
chromatic on 2003-11-03T06:15:08
The important factor determining whether an email received is indeed spam is the element of consent in the communication.Yes. Unfortunately, automating this seems rather difficult. In my day job, I want to receive mail from readers and potential authors, especially if we've never written before. In my free software hacker life, I want to hear from people using my code.
The problem is identifying these people before I know who they are.
Re:vs. Spam
Matts on 2003-11-03T08:57:55
The important factor determining whether an email received is indeed spam is the element of consent in the communication
That's a fine mantra for personal communication, but it does not apply in business. If someone wants to send Horse Porn to our customers I don't care whether they have a subscription confirmation signed in blood or not. Some spam is about content, simply because of who owns the network.Re:vs. Spam
rob_au on 2003-11-03T11:15:29
Some spam is about content, simply because of who owns the network.I can certainly understand this position and indeed I do agree with the right of corporate entities to control for what purposes their network infrastructure is employed.
The primary concern which I have with content filtering systems however is the sensitivity of some of these systems - Whilst some email can be determined as is distinctly unwanted based upon it's content, the definition between wanted and unwanted rapidly blurs when the sensitivity of an email filter is increased. Sales correspondence, legitimate promotion material, sales receipts, medical-related information and fiscal reporting information can all fall foul of overly sensitive email filters. Worse still is where such filters are applied network wide by internet service providers without the informed consent of the end subscriber.
Whilst these issues can be avoided by a combination of systems and employ of appropriately (read, intelligently) weighted scoring for the rating of messages, the incidence of false negatives in such systems still provide the means and justification for the sending of unsolicited email by spammers. Until the incidence of such false negatives is rendered statistically insignificant, email filtering serves to provide spammers a reason to fashion the messages that they send in a manner which further blurs the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate email - It could be argued that such a relationship between spammers and anti-spam vendors is symbotically evolutionary in nature, as each further refine and build their product.
In short, whilst I can understand the role of content filtering in controlling the receipt of unsolicited email, I do not believe that it is the end solution to spam and until such time that a 'silver bullet' is developed and endorsed by the technical community, fear that these filters could be doing more to perfect spam than prevent it.
Re:vs. Spam
jdavidb on 2003-11-14T19:29:42
Even then it's still about consent; it's about the consent of the owner of the system, not the nominal "owner" of the mailbox.
Re:vs. Spam
hfb on 2003-11-03T08:17:00
You didn't read it, did you?
Yes, when it comes to personal pages, I CAN go somewhere else and generally do since people with google ads usually also have lots of blinky crap too. What I'm saying is that WHEN IT BECOMES MY JOB TO FILTER SHIT ON NON-COMMERCIAL PAGES THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE IT. IS. SPAM. Advertising SPAM, but SPAM just the same.
And I can complain about the low taste of people advertising on personal home pages. If noone complains people will assume it's cool, hip and trendy everywhere. That is free speech, not posting an ad on your home page to try and make $10 a month off your friends. Those 'good old days' of academic computing are still here....guess where CPAN and the search engine are....in academia. I believe it would be illegal and possibly immoral to do such things on CPAN but I was trying to make a point while thinking how nice moving back to St. Croix might be.
And fuck the idea that somehow advertising is 'freedom of speech'. They're trying to make a few cents off your eyeballs. It's the 'new new grifterism'. Just wait until they chip you Chris and then they can send you adverts in your dreams, complete with product placements and everything.
What happens when everything becomes one giant fucking ad on the internet? What then?
Re:vs. Spam
pudge on 2003-11-03T15:59:19
You didn't read it, did you?
Yes, I did. Perhaps you didn't read my comment?
WHEN IT BECOMES MY JOB TO FILTER SHIT ON NON-COMMERCIAL PAGES THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE IT. IS. SPAM.
And I am saying that if it is not forced on you -- if it is on someone else's computer that you are a guest on -- then it is not spam.
Just wait until they chip you Chris and then they can send you adverts in your dreams, complete with product placements and everything.
And then that would be forced on me, which would be entirely unlike what you are describing, where it is not being forced on you.
What if your neighbour decided to suddenly erect a 100 foot billboard in his backyard?
Then it would be forced on me.
It's his yard and you can, of course, choose not to look at it
No, I can't. It's 100 feet tall and next door. I have no choice but to see it whenever I am cleaning up dog poop on that side of the house.
Re:vs. Spam
hfb on 2003-11-03T16:24:37
So how is it that someone whom you trust or, at least trust enough to not try and make money on the relationship you have with them, not like spam? What if your mother started sending adverts in her christmas card to you to defray the cost of the card and the postage?
And for the neighbour, well, that's what fences were created for...and zoning laws.
Re:vs. Spam
pudge on 2003-11-03T18:02:57
So how is it that someone whom you trust or, at least trust enough to not try and make money on the relationship you have with them, not like spam?
I don't quite parse the question... but I am not saying ads on home pages are good. In fact, if you reread what I wrote in my original comment, I said I dislike them. I am just saying they are not spam.
And the way in which they are not like spam is what I already said, several times: spam is someone sending something to you, invading your home, your privacy. When you go to a web page, you are going to someone else's property. That is how it is unlike spam.
What if your mother started sending adverts in her christmas card to you to defray the cost of the card and the postage?
You are again confusing "you going to someone else's property" with "someone sending an ad to your property."
Re:vs. Spam
hfb on 2003-11-03T10:00:30
Actually, think of it this way - What if your neighbour decided to suddenly erect a 100 foot billboard in his backyard? It's his yard and you can, of course, choose not to look at it....but you'll say he can't do that because the area is zoned residential even if it is just a billboard with a bit of text on it. This is how I view ads on personal web pages, it's like putting product placement ads in your home movies, replacing the pictures on your walls with sponsored ads and turning your car into rolling advert. Sure, I don't have to look, but at some point no matter where you avert your eyes there will be someone getting paid for your eyeballs. It's a form of SPAM far worse than email as now it encroaches on every corner of life. I find that an unpleasant prospect for now and for the future.
Perhaps the internet needs a few zoning laws and a ruling board.
Re:vs. Spam
2shortplanks on 2003-11-03T10:45:18
The problem with ananologies is that's all they are. The problem with analogies is that's all they are.In your hypothetical, you ignore the fact that each and every time someone looks into the neighbour's yard, your neighbour has to pay for that privilege.
In the end someone has to pay for the bandwidth.
Disclaimer: As always, these are my views and not that of my employer. That being said, I'm probably still biased.
If you pick up a copy of the Chicago Reader, a local free weekly, it's got ads in it. Yes, you have to avoid looking at the ads amidst the content, but that's the price you pay for the paper.
Don't like the Reader, or the ads? Then don't read it. Nobody's forcing you. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's unsolicited. You solicited it by picking up the paper.
Re:It's not spam
hfb on 2003-11-03T20:44:45
A newspaper is a commercial venture. What happens when the dreaded family christmas newsletter arrives with ads in it? Selling your friends for a few cents an impression to web advertisers is pretty slimy, really. Wait until spammers start figuring out that getting people to sell their trusted email accounts for money will be a nice way around filters and challenges.
Also, because of the nature of the web, I surf to places that should be ad-free, at least, they haven't advertised themselves as selling something on any links and they might be in a
.org namespace or .edu...it's forced upon me in this sense and, yes, I generally don't go back to personal pages who find my interest a commodity which they want to sell to the lowest bidder. Something you might also think about is who is the largest demographic online? It isn't middle-aged white IT guys....
Re:Oh, for the good old days...
rob_au on 2003-11-03T22:26:52
... although that link at the lower right to Download Perl is rather suspect:) You know the more I hang out on this site, I think there are some subtle undertones of advocacy and promotion for this "Perl" thing - Even the name "use Perl" raises some questions.
:-)
