Fighting against spam

The Internet's problems can be explained as a result of the widespread use of closed source software, particularly the products of the Microsoft monopoly. Most Internet-based attacks exploit bugs in software produced by Microsoft. Although bugs will be inevitable in any new software, in closed source software, they can only be corrected by the software producer itself. This last point is crucial to understanding how closed source software makes the Internet unsafe.

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1360/

SPAM is a product from commercial as well as "forwarder".
A commercial send spam for business advertising while a forwarder send spam mainly for human's nature behaviour.

Currently, my yahoo mail's inbox is mainly use for spam mail storing, while I have another folder that i store those "real and important" email. Most of the time, I leave my inbox full with SPAM mail without empty them or report them as junk mail to yahoo. I just don't wants to spend effort on this as my exprience tells me that doing so is time wasting and just plain useless: These message still keep coming and coming and coming!

Internet is the best platform for SPAMMER as it is a "nobody control domain". You could complain to your ISP and they will tell you to upgrade your mailbox by paying extra for spam filtering feature. Althought I don't agree with this as I think that combating SPAM is the basic feature that ISP should provide in no cost but I still accept that spam filtering services does cost as it required extra resources and efforts.

With the growth of mobile user, SPAM is now common on SMS too. My handphone inbox always get flood by this RUSH SMS advertisment. I can't use the same strategy that i applied to my Yahoo mail (ignore) on handphone anymore as sms can quickly fill up my handphone memory. It is the time where I wish for a SMS client that allow me to set my filter rules. Also, thanks to monopolize of Telco, I can't block junk message at the gateway level. This can get worst when they decided to charge SMS at the receiver side.

Shit! Why should I pay for message that i don't wants to read?!

Obviously, monopoly is the biggest reason for spammer to growth. It is not a fair play market. User have no right and choice in protecting their privacy. I have just send a feedback to my telco maxis regarding the matters... I not even dare to fill in my handphone number in the feedback form.... and I am looking forward for their reply.

End user that like to forward junk mail can be categorize in spammer group too. I was one of them where I like to forward interesting email that i received from friends to anothers friend group of mine. I thought they will like to read them as well until one day i got one of my friend that did the same to me. I started to realize how irritating it is and stop doing that anymore.

Forward email or message is one of the efficient channel where urban legend get to spread itself in lightspeed (even faster than electron move!). I believe that spreading news and info is something that planted inside human gene since long ago. However, spreading news without analyze on its truth and by not realizing its impact to the society is just a stupid act.

Chinese wisdom stated that "rumour stop by intelligentzia". This make me think of an incident that happends in MMU fews weeks ago during tsunami strike: Some of the students spreading message about the death of a former lecturer and his family when he was in vacation at pulau phuket. The university students are expected to be the intelligentzia by the society and yet they could be that dissapointed....

Information technology speed up the transfer rate of information. Too, it enable rumours, urban legend, junk message to spread faster and wider. Thus, the user should think twice before s/he clicking the forward or send button.