I'm a little worried though about corporate influence into this realm in general as companies like Symantec and McAfee get into the picture selling desktop implementations of sub-par software which seems to only mask part of the problem and could create others. Because the open-source movement that is popular in anti-spam efforts, things like SpamCop can get taken over for mere pennies according to the value they provide. I would hate to see the best tools removed from public access, or to have license fees be applied which might seem too excessive. I'm quite worried about the likes of Brightmail and others claiming patents, ridiculous as many of them are, and seemingly starting to shore up segments of the community at large. Of course this is just limited to concern at the moment, but where there's money, there's greed, and I feel it is only a matter of time.
The first step has already happened with spammers trying to sell anti-spam software, then anti-virus companies who themselves are the subject of many unsolicited messages, join in the fray and throw this stuff on top of pop-up blocking, and overzealous personal firewalls which seem to be more alarmist and counterproductive than useful. Then just the other day Bill Gates starts touting Longhorn as something that will validate E-mail at every point of origination in their system, specifically targeting spam (we all know how that will work out, coming from the RFC masters they aren't). How many calls did you get about your service blocking attachments when Microsoft decided to blacklist some common file types by default in OE6? I'm just thinking that it won't be long before I find myself on hold for 2 hours just trying to reach a person that can possibly fix their own problem which is killing my business, and never receiving anything but frusturation as a result (NSI circa 1998...anyone remember the 2 month registration delays?).
When these companies can do a better job and do it for the same or less money, I'll hang up my hat, but I don't expect for that to happen for some time, it might even require SMTP to die as a protocol before that happens.
Matt
Colbeck, Andrew wrote:
Check out:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/19/HNironport_1.html
SpamCop is neither confirming nor denying the report, but has put an announcement of an announcement (for November 24, 2003) on their news page which links to this URL.
Form your own conclusions... I think it's a good thing.
Andrew 8)
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