Anurag Jain's Blog
Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Spam: All your base are belong to us

Do u recieve spam? What a naive question. Of course, u do. Everybody does, including Bill Gates. AOL blocks almost a billion spam email messages in a single day! Sixty percent of my own mail traffic is spam.

But what surprises me is the no-solution uniqueness of this particular type (email) of spam. Yes, there are other more traditional forms of spam too:

* Phone: Blank/Crank/Prank Calls. Also telemarketing (A major "Do not call list" initative is underway in the US currently to tackle this problem)
* Fax: Some nasty kid sending blank messages wasting whole sheets of paper. This was especially popular in thermal-paper-only fax days.
* TV: Advertisements at free channels.
* Postal Mail: "Forward it to 50 friends or else.." letters, aka Chain-letters (Internet Version here).
* CellPhone: Unwanted SMS messages from unknown people. Get the cell phone: Your spam is calling.

The major difference between all other forms of spam vs email spam is a economic one: The cost of sending email spam is far lower than any other spam. Hence, the eventual email spam solution would also be an economics-based one and not a technological one. Just imagine how big the guy who finds a solution to spam would become! Any solutions/bright sparks, anyone?
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