From hungary-online-owner Wed Nov 22 15:07:23 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id PAA02700 for hungary-online-out31415; Wed, 22 Nov 1995 15:07:23 -0800 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id PAA02691; Wed, 22 Nov 1995 15:07:09 -0800 Received: from fekete@chi3.bc.edu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online@hungary.yak.net (2689) Received: from chi3.bc.edu (chi3.bc.edu [136.167.13.125]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id PAA02686 for ; Wed, 22 Nov 1995 15:07:01 -0800 Received: by chi3.bc.edu (931110.SGI/930416.SGI) for Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net id AA04359; Wed, 22 Nov 95 20:36:40 -0500 Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 20:36:40 -0500 (EST) From: "Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq" To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Subject: Re: (HOL) Re: (HOL-A) give me a list In-Reply-To: <199511220323.AA00347@hungary.com> Message-Id: X-Url: http://hix.mit.edu/hungarian-faq/ X-Policy-Brief: $100 per bulk email and $0.32 per copy of netnews EMP/ECP X-Policy-Full: see http://www.geopages.com/Paris/1048/#Spam-Policy or 'finger magyar@world.std.com' for the full statement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Dear Jozsi, we've both been on the net forever /;-)/ and I seem to be the more skeptical, so don't think I want to reason with unreasonable people; they could, however, be fought against quite effectively if enough of the rest are convinced - that's where reason comes in. On Tue, 21 Nov 1995 hollosi@wwlink.com wrote: > I usually get around 200 important messages a day, so I can handle > a few idiot ones easily, but recently I started to notice that the > volume is slowly increasing. It's actually quite fast, especially for those who receive more sane amounts of email than you and I do. My main problem is not with myself having trouble to drop stuff into the bit bucket, but with the general lowering of quality of online communication and eventual exodus of a great many people. > Although I agree 100% with you, I think your argument will not > stop (will not even slow down :-)) many people out there counting on > the immediate attention they create with bulk postings. When money > starts to play, people forget good manners very easily. Some do; many will, however, consider the likely loss of both money and reputation resulting in from net-misbehaving - that's why it is important to stress at any time dealing with the issue that the consequences are a lot worse than merely getting ignored! There is anecdotal evidence already that people who warn junk-emailers of getting charged back get hit less. I think that the number of those who do it out of ignorance could be kept in control. It will not stop a few determined wholesale abusers, but they should be dealt with on an individual basis in any case. > After all, junk mail works even in the real world: in spite, that most > people trash junk mail without opening it, I am sure there is a good > return on it, otherwise the practice would have stopped a long time ago. > Now add to this, that junk mail on the Internet is basically free, > and you get the point. Yeah, but the point is: network junk is not free, it is paid by the recipients. When one's making millions of people pay for his ads he should be counting on a much more serious backlash than when he pays for the stuff that the unwilling recipient just trashes at no cost. > Even if you could convince most of the reasonable companies not to do it, > there will be a steady flow of greedy newcomers: they have no reputation > to lose, they have no real chance to succeed in any business, so why not > just send out a half million messages to sell a thousand T-shirts? > $20,000 cashed, account closed, deal done. Next week new account, > new P.O. box, and change the T-shirts to "immigration info". What I am saying is that both they and their target audience ought to made aware that on the one hand is wrong, and on the other hand the realistic payout is near zero for such tricks. More and more people boycott such deals. And while there are suckers born every minute, their buying power for fly-by-night businesses can't support all that many of those. If you contain the infection to a few rogue sites while the rest kill the stuff that's considered unacceptable by most than the online immune system can cope. The problem would become more unsurmountable if net-naive marketers would be let fall into the hands of professional abusers without being forwarned, and the recipient masses would come to accept more and more incoming trash as a matter of course. The massive intrusiveness, apparently considered an advantage by the trash-the-account-and-take-the-money school, is actually working against them: such traffic draws more attention and its source is less easy to hide than postal mail. You can go after them, and publicize their past to the same audience they are peddling to - hardly possible for traditional postal scams. Besides, either they try it from a semi-respectable provider like AOL in which case they won't get nearly all that many messages out; or link their fate with a rogue site that's largely being ignored by the net already, in which case little of the zillions sent would arrive anywhere other than /dev/null. But for us it is essential to keep the non-rogues cracking down hard on them, or else they will prevail. > I wish I knew the solution, but I don't. All I know that you cannot > fight with reason against unreasonable people. Like I said, that's not the goal - rather, spread the reason where it may be effective. There are just too many people that don't know better, we should not contribute to the belief that the worst that could happen is mere deletion of e-junk at no cost to anyone... -- Zoli fekete@bc.edu, keeper of <'finger hungarian-faq-pointer@hix.mit.edu'> NOTE: spamsters and bulk emailers see 'X-Policy*:' in the header for the charges to be imposed for net abuse! ############# # This message to Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net # was from "Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq" # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # An announcement-only subscription (less volume) is available # at # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############