Sorting Out Spam (excerpt)
Reid Kanaley, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10 1997
A
disgusted Dan Birchall, systems administrator for a Web-site design
company in Mount Laurel, N.J., reviewed the scores of junk e-mail
messages he had received in a week. Among them:
--"I Mail Your Ad to 30 Million People for Pennys!!!''
--"PROFITS''
--"Do Not Open If You're Under 18''
--"It Works ... So We're Doing It Again!!''
And on and on.
"Repulsive,''
said Birchall, 25. "Annoying and repulsive.'' To see the list, he said,
"is the same kind of feeling you would get if you walked out the front
door and saw that someone has sprayed graffiti on your wall.''
..."If
I post to a Usenet group about my favorite band, some person will be
running a piece of software that runs through the newsgroups and grabs
all the e-mail addresses, and they'll send a message to all the
addresses they got,'' said Birchall. "Within a day or two, I start
getting things about get-rich-quick schemes and pornography, never
anything about my favorite band.''
Birchall
has written his own bozo filters to block junk e-mail for himself as
well as his company, 16 Straight Communications, and its clients.
But
because the mailers frequently change or fake return addresses, and new
mailers are constantly appearing, a lot of spam still gets through, he
said.
"Since
the technological solutions aren't truly bulletproof, I would like to
see some sort of legislative solution, but one as unobtrusive as
possible,'' Birchall said.
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