On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 03:49:53PM -0000, John R. Levine wrote:
The real reason there's e-mail spam is that e-mail by its nature the
costs are mostly borne by the recipient. Everything else flows from
that. There's no way to fix that without a top to bottom redesign and
maybe not even then. (By fix I mean move the actual location of the
costs, not layering on an e-postage scheme that's supposed to
artificially compensate recipients and charge senders.)
You're making the issue sound black and white (or black and black, with
the "maybe not even then").
There are certainly technical solutions that would significantly improve
some user's experience of Internet email with regard to receiving less
spam.
I'm not saying that solving the spam problem is hopeless, but I am
saying that lack of authentication isn't the problem, too much mail to
people who don't want it is the problem. Authentication can help
track a lot of the mail so that non-technical sanctions can be applied
to the senders, but it's only one tool in the toolbox.
Authentication can also allow one to apply technical sanctions. "Lack of
authentication" may not be the problem, but that doesn't mean that
"authentication" can't be part of the solution.
--
David Maxwell, david(_at_)vex(_dot_)net|david(_at_)maxwell(_dot_)net --> Unless
you have a solution
when you tell them things like that, most people collapse into a gibbering,
unthinking mass. This is the same reason why you probably don't tell your
boss about everything you read on BugTraq! - Signal 11
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