Thanks all;
I too agree that encryption should not be considered a primary solution for
spam as it constitutes a prohibitive threshold before any significant results
could be realized. Thanks for all of the input. (Remember I am working on
'Requirements' -- I am attempting to cull the chatter [which has significantly
reduced ;-], right now, for 'non-starter' solutions). I know you probably have
gone through many of these before and if there is a list I would appreciate a
pointer.
-e
On Monday, March 31, 2003 7:30 PM, Vernon Schryver
[SMTP:vjs(_at_)calcite(_dot_)rhyolite(_dot_)com] wrote:
From: "Eric D. Williams" <eric(_at_)infobro(_dot_)com>
...
All: A question is the discussion of end-user MUA technology uses of
encryption
something people want to address as a 'spam' control solution?
It's a complete non-starter and waste of time, because it suffers
the threshold problem in the worst way. Early adopters get no
benefit and many hassles. Despite decades of work, the mechanisms
to distribute keys are practically useless. The user interfaces
are coming along, but they're still poor and sometimes just don't work.
You can sometimes justify the practical hassles of encryption for
keeping your communications private, but that avoids the threshold
problem. Many of us have used at least PGP for professional reasons,
but that's a whole other world.
Encryption, whether signing by senders or decrypting by receivers, is
useless against spam until almost all of your correspondents use it.
If you receive mail from a representative sample of strangers on the
Internet, that implies that encryption will be useless to help your
spam problem until almost everyone on the Internet uses it.
Whitelists are snake oil in this context. If you can whitelist everyone
who sends mail to you because they won't be using encryption at first,
then you can just whitelist them and forget about the encryption.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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