CSC 379:Weed 1, Group 2

Anti-Spam Techniques

Blocking Domains

Domain blocking is not always effective. Since spammers are often spoofing domains, this results in the unintended blocking of non-spammers.

Charging for Sent Emails

This technique consists of charging companies to send their commercial e-mails to a big number of people. This is a controversial approach, since the Internet is a medium that has always been free. However, this approach could lead to a more formal/controlled way of commercializing over the internet.

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Opt-In

Opt-In is a term used when someone is given the option of receiving bulk e-mail when they are registering to some list. This technique implies a number of practices that will ensure correct ways of managing e-mail marketing campaigns. This is a very accepted technique, since for it to work, both parties have to put some effort. The party interested in sending the bulk e-mail, needs to give the user the choice to either opt-in or opt-out, and the user needs to decide if they want to receive bulk e-mails or not. To implement this scheme effectively, all users need to be aware of it, it needs to be simple an free, it needs to become effective within a reasonable time, it needs to update lists regularly according to user choices, and it needs an adequate complaint handling mechanism.

Opt-In E-mail Marketing is a great resource for obtaining tips on e-mail marketing and reviewing other campaigns.

Opt-in vs Opt-out, more about the topic

Domain Authentication

Weaknesses in the SMTP protocol have allowed spammers to remain anonymous by allowing them to "spoof" sender addresses. Domain authentication technologies would correct this and allow spammers to be identified.

Bounties

Spam bounties, or rewards leading to the arrest of spammers, have been considered by the US government. In 2004, Congress requested a report by The Federal Trade Commission which concluded that rewards between $100,000 and $250,000 would be necessary to make the program work.

The Goodmail approach:

Described as a guaranteed delivery of email for a price. Email will be guaranteed not to be spam-blocked by the Goodmail providers to its customers.

Although this will limit certain types of spam, like money cons from Nigeria, it does not prevent other types of corporate spam. This is more of a attempt to legalized marketing technique to spam. There are also many individual and different interpretations of what spam is to an email user that we do not want the company deciding what is spam for all of its email clients.

Bonds with escrow agencies:

One of the archaic initiatives (as of 1994) to curve spam that was originated by on of our industry leaders "Bill Gates". Although this technique creates some virtual money trail, it may produce corrupted escrow agents that can manage the results to hide certain individuals or companies from the blacklist. This technique could also limit the accessibility of email to non-profit organizations and/or poor individuals.

It is hard to keep up and enforce correctly across different countries that may have laws to allow or disallow certain types of email. By providing this type of block the abusing individuals or institutions will change the medium on how email messages are delivered. From text to sound or movie files instead making it harder to detect and interpret by a program or filter.

Links:

• Anti-Spam
• Goodmail Approach
• Bonds with escrow approach
• Bonds with escrow approach - Spam Filter