• The first rule of the Internet has become Spammers lie. It is often impossible to trace spammers back to their dark, slimy lairs. Therefore, many ISPs have taken the stance that the solution lies with other ISPs. If an ISP has a strong antispam policy implemented on their networks (which include financial consequences for spammers), and they enforce it, spammers tend avoid those ISPs. On the other hand, if an ISP is lax and doesn’t care about abuse from their networks or enforcing their policies—in short, if they just want a cut of the spam-pie—then spammers flock to them, and the ISP shares the responsibility for the flow of sewage that comes from their network.
  
  
• Spammers will only stop when it costs them money to spam. While the ultimate solution to spam will probably wind up being a combination of technical solutions on the server level (resulting in what will probably be something of a loss of privacy for all of us on the Internet), legislation (which will make spamming an economic liability for any spammers who are caught), and cooperation among ISPs on policies which will result in significantly increased financial costs to spammers, the bottom line is that spammers will only stop if it costs them money to spam, and if you have any interest in the future of the Internet and its ultimate usefulness, you’ll write your congresscritters and encourage them to pass legislation to treat spam just like junk-faxing (which carries stiff fines), and encourage your ISP to implement effective antispam policies. Most of the current legislation on the books only calls for flagged subject lines to make it easier for those filtering spam, but such requirements do absolutely nothing to stem the tide.
  
  
• Until mail transfer agent software becomes more sophisticated (such as incorporating anti-forgery features), we must hold ISPs accountable for what comes out of their networks. It’s the only effective method of stopping spam at the moment. If lazy, irresponsible ISPs lose customers who are tired of having their mail blocked because the ISP can’t be bothered to stop spam coming from their network, that will cut into their bottom line, and ultimately they will have to decide between getting money from spammers, or getting money from responsible customers. Some ISPs actually support spam—for example, Microsoft actually lobbied to weaken Washington State’s antispam legislation, presumably because they want to spam their customers. The more ISPs that can be nudged into responsible enforcement of antispam policies, the better off we all are.

What can you do?