A bit more on Spam...

[Subbarao Kambhampati <rao@asu.edu>]

As I said in class, Spam Mail is a technical problem and will need 
technical solutions (legislation--a la "do not call list"--isn't going to work
since most spam mail orginates beyond national boundaries).

In terms of technical solutions--we need solutions to two separate problems:

--Detect spam mail--this is basically what we talked about (and what spam 
software do).

 --STOP production of spam. This is quite a bit harder. By some estimates, 
more than 2/3rd of the mails relayed by the large mail serves now-a-days is 
SPAM.
     detecting them after they are produced is basically costing the 
server and mail client cpu cycles...

      The way spam is reduced in physical mail is to charge postage so the 
person sending mail pays money to get it delivered.  The biggies--including 
brother bill--are now considering standards to do this in electronic 
domain. See http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/ for 
example.

Rao