[THIN] Way OT: Scams and the Net was Identity theft scam against eBay users
- From: "TheThin" <TheThin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 11:48:38 -0500
I am going to go way off topic here, but the people on this list will
probably have some interesting thoughts on this...
(/RantOn)
First, let me say I am a republican and generally a believer in small
government. Like most people who use the Net though, I am getting tired
of the lack of control and abuse that occurs on the internet. Even if
you don't count the dollars spent preventing or tracking abuse, the
emotional toll of just dealing with the idiocy that occurs has to be
huge (I know it drives me crazy).
The question is how to bring government and regulation into the Internet
without squelching the openness that has driven it's growth, and
stimulated the ingenuity of countless people and industries. Like most
people I don't want regulation or censorship on the net (except for when
I want it), like in regards to this ebay scam. Or those guys over in
Nigeria trying to send money to the US or wherever...
When I look around I see one Government agency that I could trust and I
believe could generally help out with this situation. This may seem out
of left field (hold onto your hats here), but of all entities it is the
US Postal Service. Not only am I not worried about them reading my
email, after-all they could read my personal mail if they wanted to
today (and I trust them not to), they have a long history of dependable
service (alright dependable might be a bit of a stretch).
Why not have a national email system that could be regulated? The
Postal Service alread has an inspection/enforcement body, and the same
laws that apply to mail fraud could easily be extended to email. And
the enforcement body already exists. Afterall, two things I learned
from watching old gangster movies as a kid were you don't mess with the
IRS or the Postal Service. They got Capone for tax fraud, and I think
it was Dillinger for mail fraud. Both went away essentially for life. =20
If the Postal Service issued everyone with a SSN (or tax payer ID) an
email address, it would allow them to extend mail fraud laws to email,
and begin enforcing them. With the type of repercussions that mail
fraud brings, hopefully many spammers etc. would not abuse the system.
And of course having a centralized investigative service would allow
them to go after the big abusers easily. Tracking emails really isn't
that hard if you have the resources. =20
I know there would be a lot of issues, privacy etc. but if the Postal
Service went with open standards, POP/SMTP etc. it should be workable.
Few people encrypt their email today, and most who do, do it on the
client so even this wouldn't be a problem. And of course it could be
funded just like mail service, unlimited receive capability, and a
minimal send fee. How about $0.000034 per email?. The send fee alone
would cut spammers off at the knees.
I know if I had a mail box that wasn't full of junk mail, and I had an
avenue of some recourse against the senders, I would use that mailbox.
And of course in the end, it would be elective. If you don't want to
use it, use a different mail box from your ISP. It's there so you could
in theory receive clean, clear, email or go walk on the wild side if you
choose with a private box. So it should not affect the openess of the
internet at large.
Last, this could be done relatively cheaply, we're sending 15 Billion
(with a B) to Africa after all. It would be self-funding in the long
run, and would provide everyone with a unique ID that was designed to be
distributed. So maybe we would stop giving out our SSNs to everyone.
Allright, I'm done. And will take this over to a political forum (but
the Ebay thing prompted me to think about it). Sorry to have wasted
your time.
(/RantOFF)
-Brian Politis
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