On Fri, 13 Feb 1998, murr rhame wrote:
> There is a fundamental difference with the free email sites and
> conventional service providers. Even if a free mailbox provider
> diligently evicts any spammer, the spammer has lost nothing. All the
> bums have to do is apply for another free mail box, with the same
> company or another company. When you get punted by an ISP, a
> university, or a legitimate business, you have lost something of value
> which you will have to pay to replace.
>
> I predict that the spammers will abuse the free mailbox providers for
> a few more months. When a majority of Internet sites have been forced
> to filter the free mailbox folks, there will be no point in having a
> free mailbox. Free mail boxes are a nice idea. There are several
> free mailbox providers who are trying to control the spam problem.
> When your worst punishment is to force someone to change to another
> freely given address on your system, you have no real leverage to stop
> abuse of your services. Most spammers could care less if they loose a
> free drop box.
Hiyas:
I'm one of the administrators of nyx.net (a free type ISP in Denver). We
don't we have this problem. Why may you ask? Simple. If you want an
account with us, you have to send in a copy of your ID (Driver's license,
etc..) in order to get a fully working account. We've never had a problem
with spammers using us as a drop box simply because we make it a little
harder to get an account. I think if more free email providers eneded
open registration/immediate activations, we'd have considerably less of a
net-wide spam problem.
I should also put the disclaimer in too that we don't permit novelty email
addresses. First inital and last name (up to 8 characters) are our logins
for the most part.
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Terry E. Knab
News Administrator
Nyx Public Access Unix
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