On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 18:48:27 -0800
Claus Assmann <ca+asrg(_at_)esmtp(_dot_)org> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 02, 2003, Art Pollard wrote:
Why not allow the e-mail client to pose a Turing test to anybody that
is not in its whitelist?
Depends on your whitelist.
A group of people is supporting some open software so we get a lot of
questions via e-mail. A reply can come from various sources. Which of
the sources do you whitelist? Whenever I get a "TMDA"(?) challenge as
a response to my reply I delete it. If I knew in advance that the
person who asked the question uses such software I wouldn't waste my
time to provide free support for them.
Thus revealing, quite succinctly why challenge/response systems are
fatally flawed for interpersonal correspondence. Its worth my time
going thru a challenge response (once) to get a post onto a mailing
list -- that's a large audience, it reflects publicly on me, and the
message tends to have greater significance than one sent to an
individual stranger.
Likewise, I don't bother with whitelist challenges in personal mail.
Not worth my time, and unjustified by personal interest. I will however
suffer and handle whitelist challenges for list posts, and for
formalised role addresses where I am the initiator (eg postmaster,
listadmin, list-owner, etc) as they are special cases that predefine a
level of interest on my part.
ObAdmission: I use, like, and recommend TMDA, just not for personal
addresses. I use it in front of role addresses and in front of mailing
lists.
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw(_at_)kanga(_dot_)nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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