The future of email

[redwhiteandblue]

There was a time when you could email someone, and if you didn't get a reply you could assume it was because they hadn't read your email or hadn't acted on it yet.

Email took off in a big way because it was easy fast and reliable, far faster and more reliable than any other means of written communication.

Now that's not the case. Now you can email someone and not be sure if it reached the recipient. Did it get blocked by a spam filter, did it get lost on a server somewhere, did it go in their junk mail folder which they never check? Will they get it tomorrow or the next day, after a mail server somewhere has finished dealing with a backlog?

Obviously the cause of all this is spam, and the procedures major email service providers have put in place to try and deal with it. Such procedures work by refusing to deliver anything which might be spam. The mail servers struggle under the sheer volume of junk mail trying to sort out what should be delivered and what shouldn't, and this slows the whole thing down and costs huge amounts of money. Meanwhile spammers can conduct their business with impunity while the rest of us struggle to ensure our emails don't contain anything that might stop them getting to where we are sending them.

So does email have a future, or will spam eventually kill it off completely? What is the likelihood of the email service providers actually agreeing on a single solution? Will we eventually have to pay to have our emails delivered, just like snail mail?

[Inbedwithfaith]

There was a time when you could email someone, and if you didn't get a reply you could assume it was because they hadn't read your email or hadn't acted on it yet.

Email took off in a big way because it was easy fast and reliable, far faster and more reliable than any other means of written communication.

Now that's not the case. Now you can email someone and not be sure if it reached the recipient. Did it get blocked by a spam filter, did it get lost on a server somewhere, did it go in their junk mail folder which they never check? Will they get it tomorrow or the next day, after a mail server somewhere has finished dealing with a backlog?

Obviously the cause of all this is spam, and the procedures major email service providers have put in place to try and deal with it. Such procedures work by refusing to deliver anything which might be spam. The mail servers struggle under the sheer volume of junk mail trying to sort out what should be delivered and what shouldn't, and this slows the whole thing down and costs huge amounts of money. Meanwhile spammers can conduct their business with impunity while the rest of us struggle to ensure our emails don't contain anything that might stop them getting to where we are sending them.

So does email have a future, or will spam eventually kill it off completely? What is the likelihood of the email service providers actually agreeing on a single solution? Will we eventually have to pay to have our emails delivered, just like snail mail?


Even if spammers had to pay for their mail they would still send it. Look at the amount of junk you get through the post, i know i get tonnes of the stuff through the post. They even send it in white envelopes now so your more likely to open it. Unless they made it illegal, which couldnt happen, i dont think the problem will ever be sorted out.

[wankmaster]

If it cost 20p to send an email and the recipient got the money, then it would soon make the spammers think twice.

A good system would be that you could charge whatever you wanted for an incoming, and set it to a different figure for different people, so friends could mail in free. You'd also have to have some scheme to ensure that the sender address could not be spoofed, but I don't see that being to hard a thing to develop.

[servhot]

Hard to say, even some people of the business have decleared "erotic" or "adult" with there spam filters, how to send these people an emaol if your domain is called Erotic-Adult-Web.com :D

[Rob Stone]

The death penalty for all convicted spammers.

They'd soon think twice then wouldn't they?

[mOBSCENE]

Even if spammers had to pay for their mail they would still send it. Look at the amount of junk you get through the post, i know i get tonnes of the stuff through the post. They even send it in white envelopes now so your more likely to open it. Unless they made it illegal, which couldnt happen, i dont think the problem will ever be sorted out.

Try http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

It's cut my postal junk mail by 3/4 - doubt such a thing would ever work with email spam though...

[Geezer]

Leave the spammers alone

[Damian]

Try http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

It's cut my postal junk mail by 3/4 - doubt such a thing would ever work with email spam though...

They are great. I get no junk mail at all and also no cold telehone calls.

I don't get spam either, but thats cos my brother runs the mail server and has about 129827 different filters set up on it.

[Geezer]

the mail server and has about 129827 different filters set up on it.


How many?

[Damian]

How many?

Well ok, about 4

Spam Assassin, Razor, grey listing and other shit I don't understand when he waffles on about it.

[mOBSCENE]

They are great. I get no junk mail at all and also no cold telehone calls.

I don't get spam either, but thats cos my brother runs the mail server and has about 129827 different filters set up on it.

Yep, someone rang me the other day and I said I was on the telephone preference thing, and they apologised and put me straight through to a manager to make sure my details were purged from their system :crown:

[JT]

Yep, someone rang me the other day and I said I was on the telephone preference thing, and they apologised and put me straight through to a manager to make sure my details were purged from their system :crown:

Im on that its really worth doing

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

[servhot]

Im on that its really worth doing

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/
Yes, we have something like it also in Germany. It helps a lot to be in these kind of lists