🚀 go-pugleaf

jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:

>Surely you don't think it had either effect, do you?  You don't REALLY
>think malicious mailbombing does anything except make people mad, do you?
>Since the mailer's original actions are perfectly legal while malicious 
>retalliation can constitute any number of criminal offences here in
>the US, someone victimized by this mailbombing who chooses to be
>agressive could cause a lot of people a lot of problems.

Mail bombing is not a good idea. Sending a message back that you're
angry and don't want any further &*#$ from them is acceptable.
If you send out some 10,000 messages and you get back so many
angry replies that it is an enormous amount of work to get out the
good replies, that will send these people a clear message.

The fact that the mailbox of these people overflowed will, hopefully, tell
other companies that junk mail isn't such a good idea.

Whether or not it is illegal to send out junk mail, writing a program
to collect address from Usenet will only costs a few man-minutes.
Sending a mass mailing to those people costs only a few man-minutes as well
(and many computer hours). It's too cheap/easy to allow and of
questionable legality.

>The proper way to handle junk mail is simply to delete it.  What's so 
>hard about that?

First, I'd say the proper way is replying that you want to hear nothing 
from them again, ever. Second, gathering addresses in a database without
the addressees' consent is a criminal offense in some countries.
Third, one junk message can easily be deleted, but what if we allow this?
How long before we get hundreds of junk mail messages each day? Each
from a different address/with a different subject. I've better
things to do than collect the few interresting ones from the
hundreds of unwanted messages. It's likely we'd have to do this by hand.
The fourth reason is the fact that many people pay for the e-mail they
receive. The paper junk mail I get comes free of charge, the e-mail
junk does not.

Junk mail, just say no.

Casper