From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Oct 02 2002 - 01:59:49 MDT
People spam because spam is cheap, $ and timewise.
The best way to make it go away would be to make it expensive.
I propose a campaign to get rid of spam:
- Campaigners must simply reply to the spam as an interested customer. Ring
on the phone, send a letter, do anything that you can (short of paying cash)
to interact with a spammer that costs them time. Be persistent, find
whatever method you can. Play the nice gullible customer, and lead them on.
- After the maximum possible lead on time, drop the ruse and tell them to go
*##%$#% themselves, if you wish.
The idea is, en-masse, faked up genuine looking replies should really cost
spammers a huge amount. Simply fill their lives with crap. If spam become
expensive, they'll stop using it.
Emlyn
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Damien Broderick [mailto:d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 October 2002 13:54
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: why is there spam?
>
>
> At 02:58 AM 10/2/02 +0000, naddy@mips.inka.de (Christian
> Weisgerber) [and
> others earlier] wrote things like:
>
> >1. Spam works.
> >2. People think it works.
>
> I'm guessing that it's the latter more than the former. Where
> spam differs
> from biological viral or memetic or computer viral infection
> is that it
> *doesn't* autoreplicate via its hosts. Someone--lots of
> someones--has to
> pay to send this crap out in an endlessly renewed flood. I
> was hoping for
> some more precise sense of how much it *does* cost a
> spammeister to blast
> the world with **GROW YOUR DICK REALLY ENORMOUS AND MAKE BIG $$$$ AT
> HOME!!!** Each day presumably someone is going to the
> computer and checking
> the in-box for BIG $$$$ from dupes, paying for the machine
> the @list is on,
> for the connectivity, etc. Maybe it's so laughably cheap that
> 1000 people
> or fewer around the world think, `Hey, why the hell not give
> this spamming
> caper a go? Well, now that's done for the day I can go out
> back and bite
> the head off another chicken.'
>
> Damien Broderick
>
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