FC: One Internet exec's harsh view on spam: "We're under attack!"

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:14:14 -0800
To: declan () well com
From: Mike Masnick <mike () techdirt com>
Subject: another anti-spam dictator

Hi Declan,

Following your emails about bad anti-spam policies, I thought you might be 
interested in this story as well.  It's about Barry Shein, president of The 
World (one of the oldest "public" ISPs around), going somewhat ballistic 
when approached by a customer/friend asking about messages to him that were 
falsely being bounced as spam.

http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20021219S0003

My own thoughts on it were posted here:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20021219/151210_F.shtml

Clearly, spam is a problem for ISPs (moreso, even than for end-users), but 
his response seems to go a bit too far - especially when he's being asked 
by a customer about a specific, identifiable case of a false positive.  His 
response is:

"The one thing I won't do is spend a remaining minute of our time talking 
about false positives. If we all go down in blazes, I don't care any more."

He also has a theory that spam is really a cyberterrorist denial of service 
attack.

Nice to see anti-spam folks taking a reasonable approach to all this, 
yes?  It's going to increasingly become an issue for end-users in choosing 
who their ISP is.  Clearly, some spam filters are helpful, but there needs 
to be some flexibility involved.  Self-declared, anti-spam dictators are 
causing almost as many problems as they think they're solving.

Mike

http://www.techdirt.com/ 




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