Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Bill Gates' Idea for Stopping Spam	Ccl471	11/30/05
I once read online that Bill Gates proposed a way of stopping spam. He said that it should cost everyone 1 cent to send an email message and that the recipient should have the option of waiving the fee after opening the message. That way emails from friends and other legitimate senders would get their sending fees waived and would-be spammers would not send spam, because they usually send each spam message in bulk, and it would get too expensive for them. Gates said something to the effect that though other methods for canning spam will be proposed, his method will be the one that will come out dominant. Well, I think Gates has the best idea. Do you know when his method will be implemented? Many thanks, C.L.
Answered By		Answered On
ScottGem		12/01/05
I agree with Jo. This was not, IMHO, one of Gates' better ideas. Nor was it his alone. The idea of charging senders for e-mail has been floated by many people in many variations. The key to this is the point that the attraction of spam to the spammers is the low cost of sending e-mail. This makes the very low response rate acceptable. Increase the cost of spamming and you decrease its effectiveness. However, Gate's plan means that Internet standards need to be changed. POP3 and SMTP services are what drives mail around the Net. These are Open Source technologies and everyone would need to to agree to these changes and that just ain't gonna happen. In my opinion the best way to deal with spam is to remove the anonymity. No one should be given access to the Internet or an e-mail account unless the service provider has verified their identity. By making sure that people can be held accountable for their actions, you will reduce the abuses. HTH Scott<>

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