Step three: fix the status quo for *participating* MLM's by offering up
a new technical solution that enables MLM's to assert that they've
validated the original sender's signature.
Not to pick on Paypal specifically, since this is a general failure of
ADSP, but:
We want everyone to throw away mail from us that doesn't have our
signature.
no, wait, ...
We want everyone to throw away mail from us that doesn't have our
signature EXCEPT if it has an A-R header showing that it was signed when a
MLM received it.
no, wait, ...
We want everyone to throw away mail from us that doesn't have our
signature EXCEPT if it has an A-R header showing that it was signed when a
MLM received it AND it has a signature from the MLM to show it's actually
from the MLM
no, wait, ...
We want everyone to throw away mail from us that doesn't have our
signature EXCEPT if it has an A-R header showing that it was signed when a
MLM received it AND it has a signature from the MLM to show it's actually
from the MLM AND the signature is known to the recipient to sign mail from
real MLMs.
no, wait, etc.
I entirely endorse Paypal's efforts to make it easy to identify their mail
and easy to throw away the forgeries. But you (and anyone else whose
transaction mail is a forgery target) shoot yourself in the foot every
time you make the message more complex, since that makes it less likely
that people will go along.
In particular, all of the normal mail from paypal.com says one thing, log
in and look at your account, so losing the occasional message isn't a big
deal since you can find what it said on the web site. Now you're saying,
well, actually, there's some paypal.com mail that says other stuff that
you can't reconstruct, and that mail may well show up without our
signature. Really, really, don't do that.
R's,
John
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