Spam control (was: BitTorrent and Comcast?)

[travis at scootz.net]

> Hewitt Tech writes:
>  >
> ...
>  > I guess what puzzles me is that spam is almost always used on behalf
> of someone who is trying to get customers. It's those companies that
> should get burned. If spam is tracked back to them, and I don't see
> why it's particularly hard since they always put contact information
> in their messages, then it probably isn't that difficult to prove
> that millions of emails have been generated relating directly to
> them. They should then pay a price (loss of bandwidth, bogus
> products, whatever). In other words, don't go after the spammer, go
> after the companies that hire them.
>
> 	Sadly, this leads to another risk: companies sending obnoxious
> spam for their competitors products, hoping to benefit from the
> customer backlash against the company mentioned in the spam.

Exactly.. or they might even sign a contract saying that they spamming
company will only email to people that have signed up for for an opt-in
list, but the spammer will just send to everybody they can.. The liability
there would still be on the spamming company.

There also seems to be the new trend of sending crap emails that have no
content and random words.. I think those are just sent to verify email
addresses, but then there's no product or service being sold.