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Category: Stefan Eyram

Beat Spammers At Their Own Game

A recent Associated Press story on Yahoo! uncovers a new solution for recipients of spam to fight back…and beat spammers at their own game.
Blue Security has a solution called Blue Frog that works by using a “do-not-spam” list they call “Do Not Intrude”.
Here’s a quick overview of how it works:
# Users add e-mail addresses to a “do-not-spam” list and Blue Security creates new addresses (“honeypots”) designed to attract and catch spam
# When a honeypot address gets spam Blue Security tries to contact the spammer and then triggers the Blue Frog software on the user’s computer to send a complaint
# If enough people complain it will knock out the spammer’s website and hopefully encourage them to stop sending emails to the “do-not-spam” list.
Simple enough! But fundamentally flawed, I think.

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Michigan and Utah's Flawed E-mail Registries

In the ongoing battle against spam and, more specifically, the targeting of children, Utah and Michigan lawmakers are looking at creating an email registry that will act like a ‘do-not-call’ list.
Read the Yahoo article from Associated Press.
I applaud the idea of trying to curb pornographic and otherwise inappropriate messages from reaching children but I believe there are fundamental flaws in this line of thinking.

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