The Red and Black

This is a worldwide problem, not just at UGa. Everybody has to run a spam blocker to survive, and everybody is losing some legitimate e-mail because of it.

More than 90% of the e-mail in the world is spam. Personally, I think spam is a national security issue. If con artists and saboteurs were taking up 90% of our highways or 90% of our telephone lines, we'd declare war on them. But everybody seems to think the Internet is some kind of la-la land where sabotage is permitted.

We need for our government to get serious about prosecuting spammers, not only for spamming, but also for the numerous other frauds that they commit. Most spam was already illegal, even before the CAN-SPAM Act, because of the rampant misrepresentations, violations of prescription drug laws, and so forth.

A good step in the right direction would be to re-engineer the e-mail system to keep track of the origin of every message, instead of just trusting whatever a spammer types into his software. If you put stuff in my inbox, I have a right to know who you are. If you want privacy, don't pick on other people.