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by theglenn88_ 969 days ago
If I had a penny for every legitimate email I marked as spam, I’d be a billionaire.

Jokes aside, why wouldn’t you just farm pennies by marking all emails as spam?

You could say, “well you could detect people that abuse the system” - and now the mouse is chasing the cat.

3 comments

Because people would stop sending you email.
The flaw is in giving the penny to the user instead of the email provider. If an email provider is claiming everything you send them is spam, you stop sending to them, which for a real email provider is a problem if you're sending non-spam email their customers actually want.
You bring up a vaid case. People farming pennies could be an issue, but on the other hand, farming pennies is a more noble cause, and one that ostensibly seems far easier to catch. I'd rather do a lookup to find the outliers who are harvesting pennies than to try and cat-and-mouse spammers who are masquerading as legitimate senders.