Sometimes I wish that I could send a spam message advertising viagra or something, just so that I could track down the people who try to place an order. Not to kill them or anything, but just to ask them what the heck they were thinking.

Here's why it works. From Overheard in the Office (no link due to content)
Barnum was right.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

another idea is that they could be malware; programs people wrote to be less malicious than viruses and the likes but gives them a thrill nonethelesss.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

I did miss your point indeed, I thought you were referring to a fake "from" address.

It is a form of spam indeed, but there's a difference:

I'm a member of Microsoft Live. The add was for a feature in Microsoft Live. It is hence a directed form of "internal" spam.

I'm no Viagra customer, nor did I ever express interest in Viagra or related subjects, especially not from Russia. I have not written myself up to any group having any connection with viagra. Any (Russian) viagra add hence is a total shot in the dark, and a very rude form of spam.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I guess Nicolas has a point. I don't want credit card applications, but every once in a while my credit card company sends me special offers. Of course I think they are trash, but I do have a working relationship with that company.

If you could eliminate all unwanted contact in the world: email, phone calls, post, conversations, and the likes, this world would be a lot quieter and less interesting.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

There are a lot of people who can't afford internet, who use library and school computers. I realize 1/4 cent per isn't very much, but if you add in having to get the payment to your ISP (regardless of whether they accept credit cards or not; most of my friends don't have them), it is going to add up to be an awful nuisance, and while, say, $1 or so a month really isn't that money, most of my friends are running tight enough on money as it is.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Another difference is that the more "legitimate" forms of ad e-mail generally offer a real way to opt out. Unlike spammers, for whom this provide proof the address is live and makes it more valuable to sell. So there is a difference, but I still don't like it.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

People other than spammers who are currently taking advantage of the current email cost structure would have to start paying more in a pay-by-the-message system. Their email is not free now, however. It still costs the ISPs to handle that email and they pass the cost along to their customers, so the cost is being paid by Internet users in general. Taxes and college tuitions pay for library and school Internet access so users of those systems are already helping to pay for it. The problem with the current price structure is that the cost is distributed among all users without regard to email usage. That means everyone ends up paying for the billions of messages generated by the spammers.

I don't think I and others should have to keep paying for vast quantities of spam just so some college students won't have to plunk down a nickel to send twenty message at ¼¢ each. If it's really a problem then the schools could pay for some number of messages per student per month and a little more tax money can be given to libraries to allow visitors to send a limited amount of email. Without spam, the Internet will be less expensive to operate so the schools and libraries would save money in spite of paying for a reasonable amount of email. And if someone with little or no income has been sending a hundred messages per day then he'll have to get a job or do without, just like with any other product or service.

Apparently the companies don't even need to make money. The spammers offer to spam say 10 000 people for $100, the company thinks 'what the hell, it must be somewhat effective if peole use it, whats $100', they pay the spammer but get no money. Then along comes another company repeat ad infinium... No sales, but the spammer makes $$$$$, and the spam continues...

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

The libraries don't, generally, get enough tax money to pay their expenses as it is, you know. I know, for example, that the library in which one of my friends works can't afford decent cleaning; she's always having to do that work herself on top of all the other things she's expected to do--and she gets payed not-that-much-above-minimum-wage.

These days, it's nearly impossible to survive without some kind of internet access. If the schools and libraries had to start covering people, they wouldn't provide it anymore. (And for the record, for most of the people I've known who went to college, that's more tax dollars at work--or else large amounts of debt to be carried by the student for years. My best friends owes a fairly prohibitive amount for her not-quite-finished Master's.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I haven't seen a 'stop getting this rubbish' option in that mail though.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Money is a problem, but does someone else's need for money obligate others to pay for the cost of their email plus the cost of paying for spam plus the cost of handling the spam when it arrives? Should a business have to pay an employee several dollars per day extra to extract legitimate email from a pile of spam just to save one student a quarter of a penny?

If libraries and schools aren't getting enough money it makes no sense to continue making them pay for spam by keeping Internet access expensive by continuing to allow spammers to send advertisements at their expense. They'd have more money to spend on other things if spammers paid for their own email. If students need Internet access to survive then it makes more sense to bring down the cost of maintaining the Internet.

Universities would have local networks so students and teachers could email each other for free. They'd have to pay only for email sent to external Internet addresses.

That would be really annoying for large email lists that send out a very large number of messages a day, think of BAUT for example...

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

Lists that send lots of email use lots of Internet resources to do so. It seems only fair that they pay for what they use instead of having the cost shared by less active Internet users.

Libraries don't, generally, provide e-mail addresses to patrons coming in off the street, either, do they? I'm guessing anybody who's using a library computer for their internet access is using a free webmail program like Yahoo or Hotmail.

If a per-email fee were established, Yahoo would just be eating that cost anyway - there's no way for them to pass it on to the consumer.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

If the ad revenues of free email services exceeded the cost of the email then the free email sites might be willing to eat the cost. They'd probably limit the number of messages each user could send per month. That might be good enough for most college students. Those who find that they must send more might have to sign up for a paid service. Or they could sign up multiple times under different names. If too many people did that then the free email services might disappear.

I still haven't seen it properly addressed as to how most spam is from botnets. The $/email idea still won't affect the spammers all that much. The people who get infected with spambots would pay the fee.
"several countries" it says. It took years for the world's countries to agree what the international symbols for restrooms would look like, (no reference, got that factoid from a NASA tour of Marshall Space Flight Center a few years ago). How are we suppose to get every country in the world to agree to charge a for email? If we're charging 0.25 cents/email in the US, would that work out to the equivalent cost for a third world nation too? Or would it follow the exchange rate? If it does, then somebody charging USD for sending spam but sendin it from a third world country is still going to make a tidy profit.