On 21/02/03 3:01 AM, tedd@... wrote:
>
>You know, when someone figures out how to stop spam easily and 
>accurately, there will be a fortune to be made.
>

This struck a chord with me, as I spend a chunk of my time blacklisting IP ranges
in countries where spam appears to be a acceptable business model.

The cruel thing about your comment, is that there are already ways
for the internet community to stop 90% of spam, but the uptake of these
methods is slow. My current favored combination solution is:

ISPs only support SMTP AUTH (Including hosted clients)

and

ISPs don't allow SMTP outside of their own network
(Excepting their own servers and hosted clients)

This will stop open relay problems as long as the ISP correctly
configures their servers), as well as clearly identifying
any spam with a real user's account details.

The thing is, this is not in the IPSs best interest from a business
standpoint.  It would reduce the billable usage hours of the spammers,
as well as incur costs for server upgrades.
ISPs make money from traffic, and spammers are prime traffic
generators.  If a spammer sends one email to 100 different 
emails located at 100 different ISPs, each ISP makes a few cents
because the recipient is spending extra time online downloading
the email, add an oversized HTML attachment etc, and modem
users are getting into the dollar mark.

I did not come up with any of these ideas,

"all that is done, has been done before" (mangled quote)

I have just read alot of other peoples commentry on the subject
...but can I have my fortune now anyway ?  :-)

Jamin