On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 07:27 -0800, Marc Perkel wrote: > I've been thinking about what it would take to actually eliminate spam > or reduce it to less than 10% of what it is now. One of the problems is > the SMTP protocol itself. And a big problem with that is that mail > servers talk to each other using the same protocol as users use to talk > to servers. > I don't think that would help at all. Bots would just pretend to be mail servers and use SMTP. Any other form of spam could be circumvented by setting up spammer-owned MTAs that spammers would use to inject spam.
IMO the best solution would have been a charge per e-mail provided it was universally enforced. A small charge, e.g. $0.001 to $0.01 per addressee per message would be almost unnoticable to a normal user or business while still being enough to discourage volume spammers by wiping out their profits. Another benefit would be that the bill received by a bot-infected user would serve as a powerful wake-up call to get disinfected. Martin
