SPAM and archives (Was: Re: [plug] PHP question..)

[Paul Wilson]

Onno Benschop wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-07-03 at 10:12, Kimberly Shelt wrote:
> > Given my linmagau account is pretty splashed around the place
> > and the old zip one isn't (or for that matter wasn't) it is an
> > interesting thing.. and proves to me a good admin, who has a good
> > hand on spam assassin et al, can really be a blessing :)
> 
> On Thu, 2003-07-03 at 10:30, Craig Ringer wrote: 
> > No point in my worrying about spam-collecting behaviour now, I already 
> > get 40+ spam a day. Mozilla spam filtering rocks.
> 
> Both these messages suggest that the solution is for me to filter SPAM.
> While that requires even more of my resources apart from the stolen
> bandwidth, I must very strongly disagree with these sentiments.
> 
> The solution is to stop SPAM in the first place.

How do you propose to do this? Bearing in mind the difficulty of getting the
international community to agree on serious and life-threatening issues,
getting a 100% concensus on legislation to outlaw spam is a complete non
starter. As the US has shown, even defining spam is proving difficult.

Yes, it *would* be nice to stop it at source, but I can't see it happening. It
would also be nice for house break-ins to stop, but that's not likely either.

Ultimately, and sadly, everyone using the net has to take responsibility for
handling spam themselves. You might get help from your ISP, but don't bank on
it.

Hooker