On Mon February 9 2004 21:40, Ed Gerck wrote:
BTW, my previous posting provided a rationale for proposing the
following requirement for any current or future mail system:
- Users do not want requirements to pay for sending email or to be
otherwise burdened in any way in order to stop spam. Stoping spam
should not be a user's problem.
The above anti-requirement is attainable, fair to all, and cannot be
forged.
Unfortunately, requiring that they have a published public-key *is* a
burden to the average user. J. Random Luser just wants to sit down at
his PC, boot up Winders, bring out Lookout, and forward a garish
HTMLified email full of stale jokes to his buddies, complete with
pictures, and he wants it to go through, without a hitch, right now.
He thinks public keys are the ones hanging on the gas station wall, for
the bathroom. He thinks crypto is someone from Superman's home planet.
He thinks the IETF is them guys whut raided David Koresh. He has no
clue what the ASRG is, but he thinks it sounds dirty.
Make it worth their while, by coming up with infrastructure such that
they won't get any spam if they have a public key, and MAYBE they'll
bother doing it, IF the ISP will hold their hands every step of the way
(and not charge them too much, including for issuing new keypairs when
they let the private ones slip out too much). Of course, this means
that all their equally technically-enlightened friends have to know how
to USE his public key....
This sounds very much like the use of extra headerz, or a password on
the subject line, but on steroids. In the end, possibly useful, IF you
can get everybody aboard, but they won't go until everybody ELSE is
already on board, and meanwhile it's a pain in the proverbial posterior
to everyone who wants to communicate with the people using it.
--
Dave Aronson, Senior Software Engineer, Secure Software Inc.
Email me at: work (D0T) 2004 (@T) dja (D0T) mailme (D0T) org
(Opinions above NOT those of securesw.com unless so stated!)
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