At 12:19 PM -0500 3/18/03, Dave Lampert wrote:
Here's a solution that, together with many other solutions, may reduce the
economical value of spam to the spammers.
PATENT NOTICE (My lawyers made me do it!): This solution is part of a
patent-pending technology ("Prioritized communication") available upon
request by emailing
<mailto:dlampert_5c280fdc_0833_4499_9907_247141f16aed(_at_)homeai(_dot_)com>.
We intend
to make this technology widely available through numerous vendors under paid
license as per http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt sections 10.3.2 and
10.3.3, so I'd like to see this addressed in the ASRG recommendation for
standards.
In short, this doesn't block spam, but rather relegates it (and other
unsolicited email) to a low or zero priority (you pick it up when YOU want
to). Email from people you know have a higher priority rating. You get to
rate each person and the system issues them a unique contact email address
(usually a base name plus a GUID like the one listed above) just for them.
The system makes it easy to manage these and easy for your friend to update
his/her address book. If the unique address falls into the wrong hands and
spam begins, you can lower the rating on it, and possibly issue a new unique
address to the friend (if he/she is STILL your friend!).
1. Now nobody can remember your email address. They have to have
their address book with them on every machine they send email from.
Otherwise it ends up in your "deal with later" bin. (And it's real
easy to miss that one real message when 90% of the stuff in the bin
is spam.)
2. You annoy your friends. Initiating a discussion becomes a pain.
You also annoy strangers by sending them a new contact address that
they don't want.
3. You still have to read every email message that comes into the
main address, because you are never sure whether it's spam or someone
legit trying to talk to you (in other words, same as now).
4. If not #3, then you need a challenge response system, which
*really* annoys your friends.
5. You need to write a custom MUA that handles this whole priority
system. And if you think I'm going to let my MUA prompt me to
prioritize every person who sends me email you haven't seen my inbox!
6. You've just made a virus-writers dream. I can't communicate with
anyone anymore without an address book--so I have to have *everyone*
I send mail to in my address book.
7. You need to write custom MUA or MTA software that handles address
mapping. In particular you have the problem of any random discussion
between several people. I send to three people, they all do a
reply-all and all of the addresses are wrong for them to send to. It
will get through of course--but not at the priority you wanted. In
addition, some number of recipients are going to add the address in
the To to their address book, which isn't what you had in mind at
all. And if they send using one of those addresses after I've
canceled it (the previous owner of that address is on my bad list)
then I won't get the mail at all.
The technology goes well beyond this, such as computing the product of the
importance of the email (the "importance" tag as set by the sender) and the
rating of the sender by the recipient, and using this to rank priority of
You don't need to use custom addresses to do that. And as mentioned
above, you'll be getting mail from people to whom you didn't give out
the private address. So it isn't a reliable authentication mechanism.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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