Spam and how to legalize it and make it actually wanted...
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:14 am
Full title: Spam and how to legalize it and make it actually wanted by people!
(cross posted from my website journal, inspired by a spam that recently was in this very forum a few minutes ago)
Oh great! Another spam email plops into my mailbox, I have no idea what it is, it's just a bunch of links and words jumbled together, even cavemen must have made more sense than this. Do they think we actually bother clicking on crap like this? I'd prefer professionally made spam, that actually look like a real magazine ad.
The spam these days is pretty much impossible to read, the only thing they achieve is wasting peoples time, as I can't fathom people can even "see" that products or something is being advertised at all it's just a jumbled mess and language that do not even resemble caveman speak. I may not buy stuff advertised in spam, but I sure as hell would never trust anyone that can not spell, and I mean a real language, some of these look like loon speak or something.
I'm almost tempted to start a "serious" Spam company,
produce professional ads, proper English, informative, factual details.
And add/use a special email header tag that identify it as unsolicited mail,
as well as a special company tag so that those who do not want unsolicited mail can block fully, and those who want to block other spam but still wish to receive mine can do so. I would work with the Mozilla community to establish those two header tags as standard tags, and maybe add other tags like a category and a keyword tag.
That way the user could actually configure Thunderbird or their other email software to allow certain type of unsolicited mail, that actually would be of interest to the particular user. And on my company site I would have a easy to use and complete interface, allowing users to opt in or out completely from all unsolicited mail from me, or customized exactly what they want my system to send them. With details on what categories are available, whether the user want to add additional information to help target the type ads they get.
I guarantee you, if I actually did get off my ass and go through this.
Not only would it work, but I would be filthy rich.
And over time half the spam that is sent around in emails today would vanish. (90% is just gibberish today) but what remain would be professional and despite still being spam at least it would be semi-solicited spam that the user is at least interested in.
And we would see Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, and similar sites where spammers would struggle to get in the top of the list as only the "best" companies can reach that, those that users actually like the most.
This would make spam a business that authorities would have no issues with any more.
I'm seriously contemplating this, I would need some funding though, and make a email harvester, then contact the Mozilla folks to help make some email header tags standard then get a RFC made for those. And also contact Google to get them to add support for those special tags,
Google mail could then be set to block the spam by default but allow it's users to opt in on certain "serious" spam like my unsolicited advertising company would send.
I would evens suggest a special tag for group mail. This would be a single email sent to a single domain. i.e. the mail with the group tag would be sent to unsolicited@yourisp.tld and the ISP could then check the various the email tags and then forward it to the users mailboxes depending on the individual user's wishes. Not unlike how physical mail works in some countries. (like Norway, it more or less works)
This would mean a single mail per ad and per domain it would spare the Internet from the rivers of junk being sent all over, and it would also reduce the load on the ISP's as they would only get a single mail that they can either block, pass on to all or specific users that want that type of unsolicited mail.
Man, I'm a genius, this stuff is brilliant and I really hope all the ideas in this post get stolen, because not only would it benefit the end users if all these ideas here came true, but it would save the spammers a ton of money, but it would legalize "serious" spammers as a variant of ad companies. Heck, ad companies may actually want to get ahead early on this to steal the chance away from spammers by being first to this.
(cross posted from my website journal, inspired by a spam that recently was in this very forum a few minutes ago)
Oh great! Another spam email plops into my mailbox, I have no idea what it is, it's just a bunch of links and words jumbled together, even cavemen must have made more sense than this. Do they think we actually bother clicking on crap like this? I'd prefer professionally made spam, that actually look like a real magazine ad.
The spam these days is pretty much impossible to read, the only thing they achieve is wasting peoples time, as I can't fathom people can even "see" that products or something is being advertised at all it's just a jumbled mess and language that do not even resemble caveman speak. I may not buy stuff advertised in spam, but I sure as hell would never trust anyone that can not spell, and I mean a real language, some of these look like loon speak or something.
I'm almost tempted to start a "serious" Spam company,
produce professional ads, proper English, informative, factual details.
And add/use a special email header tag that identify it as unsolicited mail,
as well as a special company tag so that those who do not want unsolicited mail can block fully, and those who want to block other spam but still wish to receive mine can do so. I would work with the Mozilla community to establish those two header tags as standard tags, and maybe add other tags like a category and a keyword tag.
That way the user could actually configure Thunderbird or their other email software to allow certain type of unsolicited mail, that actually would be of interest to the particular user. And on my company site I would have a easy to use and complete interface, allowing users to opt in or out completely from all unsolicited mail from me, or customized exactly what they want my system to send them. With details on what categories are available, whether the user want to add additional information to help target the type ads they get.
I guarantee you, if I actually did get off my ass and go through this.
Not only would it work, but I would be filthy rich.
And over time half the spam that is sent around in emails today would vanish. (90% is just gibberish today) but what remain would be professional and despite still being spam at least it would be semi-solicited spam that the user is at least interested in.
And we would see Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, and similar sites where spammers would struggle to get in the top of the list as only the "best" companies can reach that, those that users actually like the most.
This would make spam a business that authorities would have no issues with any more.
I'm seriously contemplating this, I would need some funding though, and make a email harvester, then contact the Mozilla folks to help make some email header tags standard then get a RFC made for those. And also contact Google to get them to add support for those special tags,
Google mail could then be set to block the spam by default but allow it's users to opt in on certain "serious" spam like my unsolicited advertising company would send.
I would evens suggest a special tag for group mail. This would be a single email sent to a single domain. i.e. the mail with the group tag would be sent to unsolicited@yourisp.tld and the ISP could then check the various the email tags and then forward it to the users mailboxes depending on the individual user's wishes. Not unlike how physical mail works in some countries. (like Norway, it more or less works)
This would mean a single mail per ad and per domain it would spare the Internet from the rivers of junk being sent all over, and it would also reduce the load on the ISP's as they would only get a single mail that they can either block, pass on to all or specific users that want that type of unsolicited mail.
Man, I'm a genius, this stuff is brilliant and I really hope all the ideas in this post get stolen, because not only would it benefit the end users if all these ideas here came true, but it would save the spammers a ton of money, but it would legalize "serious" spammers as a variant of ad companies. Heck, ad companies may actually want to get ahead early on this to steal the chance away from spammers by being first to this.