Walter Dnes <waltdnes(_at_)waltdnes(_dot_)org> writes:
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 05:33:52PM +0100, Bruce Stephens wrote
[...]
So I think the best way to attack spam is to make sending email
expensive (in some way---this may involve computational cost rather
than some kind of financial framework) such that anybody sending me
email thinks a bit first (and so it won't be worthwhile sending to
large numbers of people). So this would be attacking the volume
part of usual definitions of spam.
A few problems...
1) I don't throw away a pefectly good computer and buy the
latest/greatest every year. This email is coming from a 433 mhz
machine with 128 megs of RAM. How do I compare with someone who's
just bought a 512 meg machine that runs at 3 gigahertz ?
Well, the 3GHz one is presumably about 1 order of magnitude faster
(give or take). So if the usual cost of sending an email is 1 second
on a 3GHz CPU, then it might take 10 seconds on your slower one (or,
the 3GHz machine can send 10 times as many emails in the same time).
For *really* slow machines (such as mobile phones), I imagine the ISP
could charge per email, and provide the CPU power. Something like that.
2) A beowolf cluster of cast-off 1 gigahertz machines will blow the
"computational cost" to smithereens.
Yes, that's a real possibility. It's still adding to the cost,
however: running clusters of cheap PCs is only relatively cheap, it'll
still take some running.
A more likely attack would be to include hashcash calculating code in
screensavers, Javascript on web pages, worms, etc., so you use the
zillions of PCs that other people are maintaining.
[...]
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