Spam. Will it ever go away?

Brought to you by R. John Quisenberry & Linda Lam

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Spam. Will it ever go away?

By R. John Quisenberry

...The question has been asked many times before and by many people.

...If you think unsubscribing will help, you need to learn a little more about how the world works! Did you ever subscribe? Why would you unsubscribe? What the spammer is doing is fishing. They do not know for certain that your email is a valid address, but, once they get a response from you (either an unsubscribe or a profanity ridden personal commentary) suddenly, they know for certain that it is a live email address. They may not even be an actual spammer. There are many people who make money simply by aquiring lists of valid email addresses and selling the lists to spammers.

...Perhapse you expect to be protected by your ISP? The effectiveness of that option depends on the motivation and skill of said ISP. If they gain revenue from spam or by selling spam blocking software, I would not hold my breath waiting for them to protect you out of the goodness of their hearts. At least one ISP I have dealt with (who I will not name...) has failed to block spam with obviously forged information in their headers.

...Now, a good number of experts on both the for and against sides of the spam issue have answered the question. They just say that it will never go away and that we must suffer it and try to minimize it's effect on our lives. In fact, the pro-spam people (who are making money off of spam hand over fist) seem to think we are obligated to allow spammers to send anything they like in any way they like. Some have even indignantly accused those trying to protect the public from this blight of infringing on their rights!

...The answer is simple and hard. It will go away when it stops paying to do it. If you buy anything from a spam email, you have just insured that they will never leave you alone. They only send spam because it works.

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