This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing spam and viruses in email and internet.
Most of us are likely getting used to spam and junk email as one of those things we have to put up with to enjoy the convenience of email. But why do we have to put up with it?
Email is so cheap (free) for spreading messages to a lot of people that it is much cheaper than regular junk snail mail for advertising. The thinking goes that even if only a very small percentage respond to the junk email, it would have made it worth while for the originator of that junk email.
The very quality that makes email good (free) also makes it good for junk email. It seems inevitable that we will have junk email so long as email is free.
Computer viruses on the other hand, is more like graffiti. Quite apart from viruses that may be aiming for a particular gain for the originator, some viruses are created just because the creator thinks that it is their way to make their mark, to prove their ability to beat the system.
Some hackers that created viruses to attack systems claim that they are merely pointing out the vulnerability of the systems out there and how easy it is to break them. They almost claim that they are doing the public a service in spotlighting these weaknesses so that it will be addressed before real criminals break them.
That begs the question as to whether petty thieves are doing us a favor so that we will spend more effort and money fortifying our homes before the real thieves come to call.
The common thread for spam and viruses is that these are characteristics of ecosystems in a free society. There are no supreme being deciding which email or computer app is legitimate and which ones are spam or virus.
We don't want that supreme being (dictator) anyway.
It is up to the community of email and internet users to respond in democratic fashion.
So how do we handle spam and viruses?
In response to suggestions in the last meeting for a more prescriptive action for our discussions, I offer the following as a starter and invite you to come forth with your ideas for fighting spam and viruses.
1. Do not forward messages from unknown sources or chain letters. I assume that these are just ways for people to troll for more legitimate email addresses in order to sell these to spammers.
2. Do not enter "free" draws, another way to get your email address to send you spam.
3. Come up with a program or app that will reply to a spam mail with a useless message every hour for the next day or two. Maybe if enough people do this, it will clog the spammer with useless messages and overflow his mailbox. Hopefully, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack for him to pick out the few response that he is interested in buried in the sea of reply spam.
4. Charge for sending email. If it cost us a few cents to send email, it will not be much for normal email traffic but will discourage spammers. Then we can filter out people who did not pay to send their email.
Any other ideas?
Viruses are difficult to combat but perhaps we can look at non technical approaches?
1. How can we make it socially not cool to hack?
2. Make hacking an annual competition event sponsored by someone like Microsoft so that the best hackers get acknowledged but is also publicized so we know what they do and can fix the security holes that they identified for us.
3. Can we charge for replicating a program so that the computer owner have to be notified and explained to as to why a program needs to be replicated because he is paying a small fee for it? This will stop programs from being replicated everywhere and without the owner's knowledge.
Other ideas?
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