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From Russ Brown

Filters will never solve the problem of spam, just help to manage it (8 March, p 42). I use a Bayesian filter inspired by Paul Graham’s article “A plan for spam” (). It works quite well, but I still have to review every message it labels as spam because it does make mistakes. A better solution is needed – and I suggest that the answer is to make spammers pay.

With real mail, the sender pays the cost of printing and delivery. This gives senders a strong incentive to maintain an accurate mailing list of people actually interested in their product or service.

Not so for spam. Send one spam or a million and the cost is the same. There is no incentive for the senders to vet their mailing lists, so they just let them grow. If we made senders pay a small charge for every email, even $0.001, spam volume would drop dramatically and the spammers’ collections of undifferentiated email addresses would be rendered worthless.

I would gladly pay for every message I sent if it meant that I did not have to deal with so much spam: 112 in past three days.

Toronto, Canada