Spam - Are we screwed?

I'm regularly annoyed by second-rate analysts who imply that certain industry players are sitting on a solution for spam, but not taking action.

Spam is a tough problem technically and politically. Pretending the solution is simple doesn't make it go away. However, I have generally held out some hope that a technical solution may someday save us from it.

Unfortunately, many of the "solutions" that are currently being tossed about aren't real solutions. Technologies like Sender ID only serve to validate which domain sent the email.

While this may help identify email which is "spoofing" its sending address - it doesn't help with messages from spammers who have setup their own (legitimate) Sender ID records.

Also - if Sender ID were ever to be fully adopted, it would place a huge incentive on "rogue" spammers to hijack servers / accounts / end-user systems that utilize Sender ID. It would just move the problem around.

I'll throw out a few other possible approaches I think are dismissible off-hand:

One approach I've proposed (others certainly have also) is paying for email using computing cycles. I even came up with some details on how it could be rolled-out in a politically acceptable fashion.

I detailed this approach at a time zombie systems weren't as prevalent as they are today. Now, I suspect if my approach was implemented - it would only make spamming a bit harder. Spammers might have to hijack 10,000 computers to send the same spam that they used to send with 1,000. Again - it just moves the problem around.

While complete solutions to spam seem out of reach - Palliative approaches abound.

Deploying a client-side spam filter for Windows like SpamButcher really can stop most incoming junk mail. Server-side content filters, DNSBLs, greylisting, nolisting and others can all radically cut the amount of incoming trash users have to deal with.

So, unless anyone has any bright ideas - our spam problem may be here to stay.

If I have any epiphanies on this topic, you'll be sure to hear about it.

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