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Confessions Of A Spammer

NYT: "The tipping point for spam will always be just around the corner because spammers are so good at figuring out the potential use (or abuse) of each new technological innovation."

Most of the antispammers prefer a solution known as ''private right of action,'' which would permit consumers to hunt down spammers and sue them for small damages, say $500, in a state district court -- just enough, goes the theory, to ruin the slim profit margin on spamming. Also known as distributive justice, it's the same idea that worked to stop junk faxes a decade ago: ''death by a thousand paper cuts,'' as Ted Gavin, treasurer of SpamCon, an antispam group, likes to call it.

''A little known secret about antispammers is that many of them are fairly renowned hackers,'' Colbert says. ''They track spammers in ways that the F.T.C. can't.''

September 30, 2003 at 10:07 PM in Email Sucks |

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