« One week after a soft launch... | Main | Plus Minus - Let's Build A Fire »
November 1, 2006
Anti-Spammer Solutions 
A few years ago I wanted to do an anti-spam solution that would have a network of machines to DDOS machines that send spam. A lawyer friend talked me out of it, as even the most liberal reading of the DMCA would make me a terrorist if I implemented it. (Though I heard recently that a company started offering a product to do that. I guess they're hiding liability under a corporate veil ? In any event, right on! )
The other night I thought of something possibly better: a tips / bounty system.
The police do it all the time: phone in information that leads to the arrest/conviction of a felon, and you get $20k.
Well why not do it for spammers?
I've been getting about 45 of those 'goldmark/shallbetter' spams in my inbox every day ( another 300+ get detected ). Sure, I could install a ton of software that does OCR on images and bayesian/markovian analytics on text. But that's a lot of work on my part.
Someone ( not me, i'm too busy ) needs to build a website where people can paypal in money and receive 1 credit for every dollar. Credits are spent by pledging an amount against the senders of certain spam , by a certain date. ie- I pledge $20 against the assbag who is sending out the Goldmark image spams, with an expiry of November 31st . Bounty rewards are accumulated across users.
So lets say someone calls the FBI on assbag spammer. They lead them to the arrest and conviction of assbag. (Conviction would be required, so that spammers don't turn random people in to distract people ) That tipster then gets the accumulated active bounties on that date- which could be any amount of cash-- $1 or even $100,000 ( tell me you can't imagine 100k people each giving $1 to make sure a spammer goes to jail where he's anally raped for 10 years).
Daily/Weekly updates would have postings of the worlds "Most Wanted"/"Most Dangerous" spammers.
We could even use Jim Bell's "Assassination Politics" to handle the compensation anonymously.
When expiry dates rollover, the system could either: allow money to go against other spammers (or renew) , or be donated to charity ( no direct reimbursement though ).
A system like this could turn spammers against each other. They're not in spam for the fun, they're in it for the money.
Posted by Jonathan at November 1, 2006 4:01 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)