Re: [tlug] Email address munging in the TLUG archives

["Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>]

On 06/12/06, Shannon Jacobs <shannon.jacobs@example.com> wrote:

> Your basic spammer is a greedy, lazy bastard
> dreaming of striking gold.

I am not so sure that this is true any more. I think your "average"
spammer is now a professional spammer. Maybe Godwin can shed some
light on this, as I think he is much more kuwashii than most on this
issue.

> The hilarious punchline is that the spammers will sometimes work so
> desperately hard for their dream of not working anymore--but they'll
> only do that when they think there's a possible goldmine.

I think spammers make decent money without having to work particularly
hard. Everything is automated, so all they have to do is buy their
lists of email addresses, feed them to the software, and go. I think
the part of spamming that requires the most work is maintaining your
business relationships with the companies whose products you are
advertising. How that is any different, in terms of work required,
than your average sales or advertising cube warrior, I cannot tell.

> I very much agree with this. My own plan is for a spam-proof email
> system that lives transparently in cooperation with SMTP. That
> essentially reduces the spam problem to a four cell interface table
> and you can let the users decide how they want to configure it. For
> this brief description, call it the NEMS (for New EMail System). The
> table is:
>
> SMTP -> SMTP is the warlike spam-filled status quo
> NEMS -> SMTP is treated as status quo (because SMTP can't do anything else)
> NEMS -> NEMS is spam free
> SMTP -> NEMS is the decision locus.

I really don't understand how this could be implemented. Can you
provide more details?

-Josh