Any less spam for you?
Posted : Wednesday November 19th, 2008

A big story last week in the world of the internet was the shut down of McColo Corp a shady hosting company responsible in part for a great deal of the spam on the internet.

In the days following the shutdown companies across the world reported a drop in spam activity of 50% to 80%!

It's the typical internet story to me at least. I think it's great it was shut down but what took so long? Rather than limiting bandwidth of ordinary customers why aren't ISPs held directly responsible for more of their clients dealings? Seems to me that simply enforcing accountability would clean up so much lawlessness and abuse.

The whole thing also provides more fodder for my long held belief that email protocols should be revamped entirely. SMTP is pathetically weak and worse most implementations are recklessly open out-of-the-box.

Tags

ISP  McColo  responsibility  shutdown  SMTP  spam 

Categories

Internet  Personal 

Comments

EJP - Feb 18th 2009 9:30 PM
 
It has always seemed to me that the spam problem could be solved completely if ISPs charged a fraction of a cent per addressee to receive e-mail.

The English Post office made the same decision some time in the early 1800s. Previously you had to pay to *receive*, after that you paid to *send*.

It just allocates the charging where the costs actually fall.

Max - Feb 19th 2009 11:22 AM
 
Hey EJP,

Thanks for taking the time to leave the comments. Your proposal here confuses me a bit. You want to charge at the receiving end?

But spam is unsolicted?

I don't think I'm following.