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RE: [Asrg] Nothing will stop spam???

2003-07-03 17:55:37
At 3:41 PM -0400 7/3/03, Bob Wyman wrote:
not been granted. For instance, mail which meets all consent rules might
be delivered to the main inbox while mail which does not would be
delivered to a "gray" inbox that would need to be scanned from time to
time. Personally, I don't see how a "graybox" can be avoided...

Most spam filters use it in one way or another. But we've already heard reports (e.g. with the yahoo/donotcall business) that people stop looking at them after a while. And in fact that's been our experience with our customers--even though we send them a periodic summary via email.

But that's fine. I can deal with that as an answer to the non-ui problems I see with consent. In fact there is virtually no proposal anyone has made here (save the "replace the system" ones) that doesn't as it's heart depend on grayboxes and whitelisting. Unfortunately the first is vulnerable to volume, and the second to spoofing.


sending "Letters of Introduction." In the old world, you couldn't just
go off talking to anyone you wanted to. The expectation was that you
would be first introduced. If consent based systems become more popular,
what we're going to see is people doing things like writing letters of
introduction. For instance, I'll write an email saying: "Tom asked for
your email address today. He's a good guy and should be on your
whitelist."

That sounds nice. But it negates a lot of the current benefits of email. (Immediacy. The lack of a need for an introduction...)


        On a more technical line, we might see the creation of a
specific form of email message which is a "request for permission to
send." This would be something like a specific MIME type, perhaps XML
encoded, that would be recognized by consent based systems. One would
send a message in this form providing a self-introduction and requesting
permission to send. Of course, spammers might send such things, however,
my guess is that the response rates would be so phenomenally low that
they would soon stop doing so.

But that falls back to my assertion that providing sufficient information to decide whether to talk to someone is going to be sufficient for a spammer to send an ad.

Whether that ad would get any response is something I don't think we're qualified to judge. After all, most of us can't imagine why the existing ads get any response. But I suspect that:
        Will you accept mail from someone who wants to sell you Iraqi
        Most Wanted Playing Cards.
would do just fine.

Sometimes I feel like we're the janitors in Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons".
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/          Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
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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