Re: A potential way to cut down on spam.

[alvin <alvin@iplink.net>]

Eugene Crosser wrote:

>On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 16:43, alvin wrote:
>
>  
>
>>We are going to run this up at some point and give it a try but it may 
>>take a bit of time before we can find the time. So I thought I would 
>>post the suggestion and see if anybody has any comments or has tried 
>>this before.
>>    
>>
>
>We did not try this because we understand that this will only work until
>spammers undestand what happens and adjust their techniques.  (For us,
>this may happen rather quickly as we a "target of choice").
>
>  
>
for spamming to work it requires high volumes and cannot tolerate 
retries. One of the projects here(not mine or sanctiond by me) is a 
service that mails out jokes and other humorous spam to people who opt 
in. This works by sending out about 500,000 mails a day in a 2-3 hour 
period the system will only work because most of the addresses take mail 
the first time and failures are taken out of the high speed queue and 
put in a regular mailer queue.
The regular mail takes as long as it needs to and failures are removed 
from the mail list after a while. This scheme works only because there 
is about a 99 to 1 ratio in the directly deliverable mail to mail that 
requires special handling.

One of the up sides of spam is that I can send out 1,000,000 mails in a 
day and about 1% will be read. But if I am now limited to 10,000 mails a 
day because I cannot get through first time then spamming is slightly 
less attractive.


-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   voice: (416)785-4051
Interlink Connectivity        ||   fax:   (416)785-3668
alvin@iplink.net              ||

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