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AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam Filters

By Last Night in Little Rock, Section Off Topic
Posted on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 03:53:37 PM EST
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by Last Night in Little Rock

This is somewhat off topic, or is it? You are reading this on a computer. Therefore, you get spam. Spam is a fact of Internet life. Therefore, you are interested in this:

Remember the "'Net Lore" false urban legend of "Bill 602P" that would impose 5 cents postage on all e-mails, and you should write your Congressman?

Tomorrow's NY Times, posted on its website this afternoon, has an article that AOL and Yahoo! are on the verge of selling a spam filter avoider to mass e-mailers for 1/4 cent per e-mail.

Makes me wonder: Did they design spamfilters just to make it possible for mass marketers to buy their way around them?

The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services.

The key is the next sentence:

The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

AOL's spamfilter is a part of its program. Then it sells the key to get around it. Capitalism and Internet life being what it is, somebody will write a program for sale that will take out AOL's and Yahoo!'s approved spam-for-sale.

Reminds me of one of the reasons I got TiVo: Avoiding TV spam called "commercials."

And this comes along just when all these spams for Viagra, Cialis, Lavitra, and penis enlargement petered out.

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    AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam Filters | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#1)
    by Sailor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:26:15 PM EST
    It's the AT&T business model, (also known as the protection racket), it costs extra NOT to be in the phone book, that is 'non-listed', more money to be 'non-published' and even more to not to be subject to caller ID. Hey, you want freedom, you're gonna have to pay for it!

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:28:21 PM EST
    From the article:
    The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.
    It's not spam if you've agreed to receive it, so bypassing spam filters is a good thing.
    Reminds me of one of the reasons I got TiVo: Avoiding TV spam called "commercials."
    There's a difference between payment and spam - or would you prefer pay per view for all television? I've got a web browser that will allows me to block ads. Maybe I should block all the advertisements here at TalkLeft. Why do people want to use web based mail, anyway? Mail can't bypass my spam filter, and it works very, very well. Maybe "Last Night in Little Rock" misread the article? Or he's having a really bad day?

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#3)
    by Edger on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:41:21 PM EST
    I use Outlook 2003 to connect to Gmail, and almost never give my email address to a website. It works well and just about zero spam gets thru the combination of gmail and my safe senders list. My hotmail account receives an average of 20-30 spam items every day, and one day there were more than 700 spam items from the same sender in it.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#4)
    by scarshapedstar on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 06:25:54 PM EST
    Huh. I guess that completes my switch to Gmail, then.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#5)
    by scarshapedstar on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 06:37:11 PM EST
    Also, allen:
    It's not spam if you've agreed to receive it, so bypassing spam filters is a good thing.
    Are you actually implying that every single person who "agrees" to receive spam actually made a conscious effort to check a box labeled "YES, I want you to spam me"? You seem to have very little familiarity with privacy policies. Might want to bone up on them. You're also ignoring the mysteriously difficult process of getting off of some mass mailing lists. On the whole, though, I agree that this shouldn't be an issue. Unless we have Republicans running the country for another decade, it won't become illegal to run Bayesian filters on all email you download. The Tivo issue is a little less hopeful, as we've already seen the commercial-skipping feature removed and certain Congressmen are gleeful at the prospect of banning it altogether for some f*cking reason. Clearly, sorting through information recieved through a modem before you view it: good, sorting through information recieved through a cable box or antenna before you view it: bad. Some things I'll never understand, I guess.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#6)
    by Edger on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 06:38:34 PM EST
    Scar, I've had only two spams in my gmail inbox in the past two weeks. It's pretty good, and even though it's still beta is very reliable. Not much downtime. If you use Outlook you'll need 2003. Outlook XP(2002) will not work with Gmail.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 09:44:09 PM EST
    "agrees" to receive spam
    No one agrees to receive spam. I could probably figure out what you mean, but I don't want to. AOL and Yahoo aren't (officially, at least) trying to sell spammers the ability to bypass filtering. I've been on (and off) several email lists over the years. One of the lists I'm currently on is a monthly newsletter that is sent to probably thousands of people. It's not spam 'cause I asked to receive it. It's the owners of that newsletter that are the targets of this "offer", not spammers. I've never had any difficulty getting off of any email list that I asked to be on - that is, any list that wasn't spam. (Clicking on those unsubscribe links in spam is just a way of getting even more spam, but we all already know that, I suspect.) But then, I don't give out my email address just because someone or some form asks for it.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#8)
    by pigwiggle on Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 07:20:53 AM EST
    Spam is annoying, but it is reasonably easy to avoid if you are careful. Most folks are using yahoo free of charge; hard to complain about a downgrade in free, well, and be taken seriously. AOL is another matter. AOL is your parents' or grandparents' ISP; it's made to be foolproof, they hold your hand, it's for technophobes. If you want to dump them in protests good luck finding another ISP as accommodating. This is a sore spot for me. I love the wild ruthless nature of the internet. It's a tough place and you need to watch yourself; phishing, viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, ... The kind of freedom that allows this kind of crap to prosper also allows a lot of absolutely incredible and brilliant stuff to prosper as well. But enough naive and simple folks get taken and government will regulate it into mediocrity. It's what they do best.
    "Hey, you want freedom, you're gonna have to pay for it!"
    In college I went two years without a phone, TV, radio, car, computer, all of it (yeah, I was very hard left at one time, left of all you jokers). Don't like their product, don't pay for it. You pay for convenience, freedom, in general, is free.

    AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam Filters | 8 comments (8 topical)