[anti spam] I like this kind of reading.

[redhead]

All the world need to do, is to disable every open mail relay, and pass on laws making any kind of spam, you can't unsubscribe from, illegal and worhty of a prisson sentence of 100 years.

That would stop about 90% of spam.

[sde]

that would require a new world order,

[technobard]

Interesting. I can't believe I missed this thread. I've been too focused on my new job lately. Anyway, for my 2 cents:

I've always thought that a system that took the best of what a lot of people already do (and made it easy) would help. That is: have multiple email accounts with different uses. To formalize it, have a public address and a private address.

The public address would accept anything from anybody with the idea that you're probably not going to check it as often because a lot of junk ends up there that you just have to delete anyway. But when you want to sign up for an e-newsletter, join an online forum, etc. where an email is required and you're wondering if providing it will generate extra spam, this is the address you'd use.

The private address would only accept mail from a) pre-approved addresses and/or b) would require the sender to respond to an auto-generated message. The definition of "pre-approved" is where it gets interesting. You could exchange keys for example.

But you could extend this (with a lot more work) to include membership in groups that you sign up for on other sites. Now the accepted way of handling that is to manually add the mailing list address to the whitelist. A simpler solution (for the end user at least) would be to have it happen automatically or not use the standard mailing list model at all.

The last nice to have would be an account that wrapped both the public and private addresses, so you could login in one place and check public and private folders.

Okay. Call it a daydream, but email and spam control is one of those topics that most people have something to say about.

[Valmont]

From my rss newsfeed reader:

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 08, @01:24PM
from the at-least-of-the-U.S. dept.
ermita2 writes "The South Florida Sun-Sentinel published this weekend a story about how South Florida is home to more spammers than any other place in the world according to Spamhaus. The reason for that seems to be Florida's long history and friendliness with dirty business from real estate speculation to the penny stock scammers. Among the interesting tidbits is anecdotal evidence that the amount of spam worldwide fell for a while after last year's hurricanes in Florida."