A while back I heard an article about how some universities were looking into the possibility of essentially “rebooting” the Internet to make it faster and more secure. I’ve been thinking about that for a while now… and it isn’t a half bad idea.
The article didn’t give much detail about what needs to be done… but I tend to think instead of a literal “reboot” all it needs is some maintenance.
Get Rid Of .info And .biz
There is no reason to have .info and .biz extensions. They are being misused all the time, and some estimates place then number of spam sites that use those extensions around 20-30%, personally I think it is closer to 70%.
Or even just stop allowing anymore .info and .biz registrations.
Force All SMTP Servers To Require Password Authentication
A huge problem with e-mail spam these days is how some hosts don’t require authentication to send e-mails with their servers. Luckily most hosts now require passwords, but I still think all SMTP servers should be forced to require such authentication to send e-mails, period!
Make It Harder To Fake Your Email Address
Do you have any clue how easy it is to make an e-mail appear as if it is from someone else? Here is a screenshot of an e-mail I sent to my gmail account… look at the “from” address…
There has to be some way to make it much harder to do that. Some sort of server checks?
Offer Easier Instructions For Reporting Spammers
No matter how many algorithms are added to the SEs, they will never defeat spam. Period.
So, why not make the procedures for reporting spam much easier? All search engines and ad networks should take a look at their procedures and figure out how to make them easier. If you can’t chase the spammers away with algos, at least let the users report them.
Make It All IPv6
Thankfully the U.S. has made a strict mandate that says the civilian and military Internet needs to support IPv6 by the end of 2008, but there are many other countries still way behind in the adoption of the new standard. Time for them to catch up.
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