Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Credits
The original text for this page came from the http://www.cauce.org website. It has been formatted, revised, edited, and updated. It is printed here for convenience and posterity.
Non-Solutions
This page discusses some of the "solutions," mainly proposed by spammers, to the problem of spam. Each is listed with the reason(s) why it doesn't work.
Opt-Out
"Press Reply and Type Remove." Seems like every spam you get these days has that somewhere in it, doesn't it? Spammers claim that if you would just do this for them, then they won't send you any more ads! There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work, but we'll cover the basics here:
- Why Should I Have to Remove Myself From a List I Never Joined? Think about this; is it right that you should be forced to remove yourself from mailing lists which you never elected to be on in the first place?
- You Still Get Spam. In order for this to work, you have to receive the spam in the first place. Your time, money and energy, not to mention huge amounts of bandwidth --the excess costs of which are (or will be) passed on to you in the form of higher access fees -- from your Internet Service Provider, and the rest of the Internet. Why do we have to pay to receive ads we never asked for?
- So You're Off THAT Spammer's List -- So What? There are literally millions of potential spammers out there! Even assuming that every one of them will accept "remove" requests, you'll still have to "remove" yourself from each list, once again ensuring that you'll continue to receive spam.
- What About "Global" Opt-Out Lists? A single database where people could opt-out of all spam would be nice. However, it doesn't answer the basic question of "Why do I have to spend time getting off a list(s) that I never wanted to be on?" In addition, there's no way to force spammers to honor such a list, and they will not.
- No Reply Address. Much spam has been forged in some way so that it is very difficult to determine the origin, and impossible to just hit "reply"- the address you are replying to doesn't exist!
- I Removed Myself Already. Even if the "remove" address is valid, many spammers don't remove you! It is not in their interest to do so; far easier to simply auto-delete any responses. In addition, some junk emailers simply treat the remove request as verification that your email address is valid and continue to spam it.
Filtering
This solution is one that spammers really like. Filtering means to automatically delete messages based on things like origin or Subject line, etc. Why doesn't this work?
- There's Too Much. The amount of spam is growing day by day, with no signs of an abatement in volume. Filtering means you, your ISP, and your system have to work harder to filter out junkmail.
- You Still Get Spam. In order for this to work, you have to receive the spam in the first place. Your time, money and energy, not to mention huge amounts of bandwidth -- the excess costs of which are (or will be) passed on to you in the form of higher access fees -- from your Internet Service Provider, and the rest of the Internet. Why do we have to pay to receive ads we never asked for?
- It Doesn't Work. Period. Most spam is forged in some fashion, making it impossible to determine the origin. In addition, many spammers are using software which modifies things like the subject line slightly with each message, or disguising spam to look like personal mail (Like putting your name in the subject line). No matter what filtering mechanism is built, spammers will find a way around it.
Delete It
"Just hit delete!" is something that quite a few spammers will tell you -- after all, it's just an email message, right? Not worth getting worked up over. What they don't tell you is that in order to deliver that message to you, other people paid for it. Why we know that "Just Delete" won't work:
- You Still Get Spam! (See the trend?) In order for this to work, you have to receive the spam in the first place! Your time, money and energy, not to mention huge amounts of bandwidth -- the excess costs of which are (or will be) passed on to you in the form of higher access fees -- from your Internet Service Provider, and the rest of the Internet. Why do we have to pay to receive ads we never asked for?
- How Much is Too Much? What does it take before your email inbox is useless to you? 5 spams a day? 50? How about 500? If spam manages to become legitimized, then 500 messages a day will be small potatoes. Spam is amazingly cheap to send, and spammers will take advantage of this to turn your email box into a billboard for their advertisements, making it totally useless for regular (wanted) email.
Strike Back
Many people who receive UCE want to strike back at the senders in some fashion- this urge is magnified when the spam is particularly offensive or obnoxious. Simply put, attacking senders of UCE is not a good idea, for a number of reasons:
- It's Illegal. You can get into a lot of trouble for attacking another computer or network. Denial of Service (DOS) attacks are the most common type of attack, and can land you in jail. Hacking your way into the offender's computer is definitely going to produce the men at your door with their sense of humor surgically removed.
- Don't Lower Yourself. There's no reason to stoop to the level of spammers. Sending mailbombs, SYN floods, or other attacks against senders of UCE just makes you look childish.
- You May Hit the Wrong Target. Many spams are forged to look as though they came from somewhere other than the true origin. This often leads to innocent third parties getting flamed for no reason, which does nothing to help fight spam.
- It Reduces the Credibility of Us All. Whenever someone attacks a spammer's system, they are simply giving the spammer more publicity, as the media will pick up the story, which will quickly translate into sympathy for the poor, put-upon, business who is being unfairly targeted by Internet loonies. When the attack finishes, the spammer will be better off than if the attack had never occured.