More on the “Gates of Hell-E-Mail Tax”
Macworld magazine’s MacCentral ran an article entitled “Macs help The Spamhaus Project take on spam”. (Click here to read the article yourself.) Steve Linsford, head of The Spamhaus Project, an effort to provide identification and tracking as well as deterrence to the world’s worst spammers, said the following:
"In the fight against Internet spam, which is now 70 percent of all e-mail in the U.S., Apple is nowhere to be seen. In contrast, Microsoft, whose OS insecurities are at the root of most spam problems, is at every spam conference and law enforcement meeting we attend. They position themselves as saviors, but in reality they're very much the silent conveyor of the problem: 70 percent of all spam comes from hijacked Windows machines."
Now, it may not be absolutely correct to blame the problem on Microsoft. Most users do not take the simplest of measures to secure their machines, and they are easily hijacked. However, to blame it all on users is an oversimplification of the problem. The fact that Windows is so insecure is very much at the heart of the problem. And Mr. Linsford hit on the exact reason why I felt Gates’ suggestion about an e-mail tax was so insincere, i.e., it did nothing to address the fact that Gates’ products were part of the reason for the problem. In fact, it appears to me that Gates stands very much to profit from such a measure (e-mail tax). You can bet it would result in either Microsoft selling more “must have” software to make it work (after it had been mandated by the government, no doubt) or somehow, someway, Microsoft would skim off some of the fees.
Instead of us users paying a fee to stop the problem Mr. Gates and company helped create in the first place, maybe we can get the government to insist that Mr. Gates and company pay us a penny for each unsolicited e-mail we receive. The cash drain out of the Microsoft coffers would be large enough where we’d see a technical solution appear out of the company pretty quickly, and they might even give it away for free.
"In the fight against Internet spam, which is now 70 percent of all e-mail in the U.S., Apple is nowhere to be seen. In contrast, Microsoft, whose OS insecurities are at the root of most spam problems, is at every spam conference and law enforcement meeting we attend. They position themselves as saviors, but in reality they're very much the silent conveyor of the problem: 70 percent of all spam comes from hijacked Windows machines."
Now, it may not be absolutely correct to blame the problem on Microsoft. Most users do not take the simplest of measures to secure their machines, and they are easily hijacked. However, to blame it all on users is an oversimplification of the problem. The fact that Windows is so insecure is very much at the heart of the problem. And Mr. Linsford hit on the exact reason why I felt Gates’ suggestion about an e-mail tax was so insincere, i.e., it did nothing to address the fact that Gates’ products were part of the reason for the problem. In fact, it appears to me that Gates stands very much to profit from such a measure (e-mail tax). You can bet it would result in either Microsoft selling more “must have” software to make it work (after it had been mandated by the government, no doubt) or somehow, someway, Microsoft would skim off some of the fees.
Instead of us users paying a fee to stop the problem Mr. Gates and company helped create in the first place, maybe we can get the government to insist that Mr. Gates and company pay us a penny for each unsolicited e-mail we receive. The cash drain out of the Microsoft coffers would be large enough where we’d see a technical solution appear out of the company pretty quickly, and they might even give it away for free.
posted by Andy Foster at
2:23 PM
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