Wednesday, June 15, 2005
The never-ending stream of viruses.
If nothing else, virus emails do provide me with some amount of amusement as I see their titles. I keep getting a bunch of emails from various official-sounding RampantGames.com return-to fields that are warning me that my account is about to expire, or has expired, or been terminated because I'd done naughty things on their website. Of course, if any of those official-sounding email addresses even existed, they'd be ME. And the attached documents have been "authenticated by the Rampantgames antivirus check - no viruses found." (Every other virus checker in the known universe sends up BIG hairy warnings, so I guess my company had better stick to doing games instead of virus scanners....)
Man. If only we'd been more paranoid back in the day when the email protocol was standardized.
By the way, if you get any of those emails - we're not sending 'em out, it's not from our server, we have no control over them. And we're not suspending anyone's account. Nobody at Rampant Games is actually the deposed prince of Nigeria in hiding, either. Though if you really DO want to send me a few thousand ANYWAY, I wouldn't say no.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:59 PM (Permalink)
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The biggest problem with the SMTP protocol is that it was designed to imitate a physical post-office system. With the regular post office, you can put whatever return address you want to on the envelope. You can enclose any (non-dangerous) items you want in the mail. You can even pretend to be someone else if you want.
SMTP is the same. It used to be that any SMTP server would allow you to use it as a "drop-box" -- just like the post office -- until spammers shut down that free ride.
However, the physical post office has two things protecting it which email does not:
1. Cost as a barrier to entry. It costs a great deal to ship letters internationally or in great bulk.
2. Mail and wire fraud laws that carry real penalties if perpetuated within the US.
It's long been known that #2 doesn't really apply well to international solicitations. We've relied on cost as a barrier to entry when stiff federal penalties wouldn't apply. And that works fairly well.
But email is ubiquitous and with a cost approaching free. I don't think anybody's dreamed up the perfect solution to the problem of over 90% of all mail messages being spam, with the vast majority being housed overseas in "bullet-proof hosting" facilities. The person who figures out how to recover the commons from the flooded detritus of bulk email will either be rich or venerated...
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SMTP is the same. It used to be that any SMTP server would allow you to use it as a "drop-box" -- just like the post office -- until spammers shut down that free ride.
However, the physical post office has two things protecting it which email does not:
1. Cost as a barrier to entry. It costs a great deal to ship letters internationally or in great bulk.
2. Mail and wire fraud laws that carry real penalties if perpetuated within the US.
It's long been known that #2 doesn't really apply well to international solicitations. We've relied on cost as a barrier to entry when stiff federal penalties wouldn't apply. And that works fairly well.
But email is ubiquitous and with a cost approaching free. I don't think anybody's dreamed up the perfect solution to the problem of over 90% of all mail messages being spam, with the vast majority being housed overseas in "bullet-proof hosting" facilities. The person who figures out how to recover the commons from the flooded detritus of bulk email will either be rich or venerated...
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