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yuccaВот что обсуждается на листе, на который я подписана. Интересно, удастся ли когда-нибудь действительно прижать спаммеров? С телемаркетерами вроде разобрались, теперь можно записать свой телефон в специальный список, и назойливые звонки прекращаются.
It is a waste of time and money for lawmakers to get involved with
stopping spam. The problem can be solved technologically with existing
technology.
All that is required is an email host and client system that provides a
more sophisticated filtering process than what is provided today.
First, a user should be able to filter out everything but what he
authorizes.
To start with:
(1) Known senders (with the ability for user to automatically add
addresses to which one sends email to and easily maintain the list).
(2) Passwords (i.e. filter allows in anything containing in the subject
or body one of a list of passwords the user selects).
Then, a process is needed to allow an individual to reach you if
they're
not on your list and they don't know your password. Any sender that is
rejected gets a reject notice which would contain a special
one-time-use
password that the user can include in his email. Of course the
password
would have to be in some form that requires a human to read it, such as
a gif or jpg image of the password with a complex background or a
simple
"riddle" of some sort such as "Your password is the number 123 plus
10."
Spammers are not going to take the time to go through this process
because, even if it only takes one second, one second times 100,000 is
over 24 hours!
So far, the total cost of this solution is the price of a relatively
simple software project. It doesn't require any special infrastructure
changes and will work for any individual who uses the new system. If
the system became widespread, it would stop spamming as we know it
today
nearly 100%. It doesn't require any enforcement or litigation.
Compare
the cost to the millions that will be spent and wasted attempting to
handle this through legal channels.
I've been tempted to write the software myself but, wouldn't you know
it, in this market I happen to be way too busy! There's probably not
much money in it anyway because it's too easy for competitors to
duplicate, it's probably not patentable and the last part of the
process
will probably only be needed for a short time. Here's why.
Presumably it won't be too long before it's easy, practical and
commonplace to send small amounts of electronic "money" attached to an
email. Yes, I know about PayPal, but I mean REALLY EASY. Once this
capability is available, the email host or client should allow a user
to
filter email from unknown users based on a personal "cash threshold"
for
each user. For example, I could allow spam or unsolicited email into
my
system provided it has $1 earnest money attached to it. If I choose, I
could have a public policy (stated in my email reject letter) of
returning the money to any legitimate contacts. If I deem that the
email is spam, I keep the money. But, if you think about it, even a 1
cent threshold would be a very significant deterrent for spammers
(100,000 emails times 1 cent is $1,000). This last idea, by the way,
is
not my own. It's courtesy of our hero Mr. Bill Gates in "The Road
Ahead". But it's not necessary to the system anyway. I only mention it
because it's something that could replace or augment the system in the
future.
The basic idea is to make it just a little bit more "expensive", in
terms of time or money, to send email to unknown recipients. The bulk
of legitimate email is between users who know each other anyway. The
cost would be insignificant to most of us, but to a spammer it's life
threatening. Nothing is free, so there is going to be a cost to
getting
rid of spam regardless. But why spend millions trying to arrest them
all when we can just quietly remove their market?
So how about it? Any of you unemployed programmers out there want to
go
for it?
Rick Harrison
KnowWare, Inc.
>Bounty Hunting for Spammers?
>By Caron Carlson
>
>A fourth U.S. lawmaker threw her hat into the anti-spam ring this
week,
>announcing planned legislation to combat the increasingly costly
scourge of
>unsolicited e-mail. Previously opposed to measures limiting Internet
use,
>Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Wednesday that she will introduce a
bill
>that creates a bounty for identifying spammers
>
>See the Full story at:
>
>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1051282,00.asp
It is a waste of time and money for lawmakers to get involved with
stopping spam. The problem can be solved technologically with existing
technology.
All that is required is an email host and client system that provides a
more sophisticated filtering process than what is provided today.
First, a user should be able to filter out everything but what he
authorizes.
To start with:
(1) Known senders (with the ability for user to automatically add
addresses to which one sends email to and easily maintain the list).
(2) Passwords (i.e. filter allows in anything containing in the subject
or body one of a list of passwords the user selects).
Then, a process is needed to allow an individual to reach you if
they're
not on your list and they don't know your password. Any sender that is
rejected gets a reject notice which would contain a special
one-time-use
password that the user can include in his email. Of course the
password
would have to be in some form that requires a human to read it, such as
a gif or jpg image of the password with a complex background or a
simple
"riddle" of some sort such as "Your password is the number 123 plus
10."
Spammers are not going to take the time to go through this process
because, even if it only takes one second, one second times 100,000 is
over 24 hours!
So far, the total cost of this solution is the price of a relatively
simple software project. It doesn't require any special infrastructure
changes and will work for any individual who uses the new system. If
the system became widespread, it would stop spamming as we know it
today
nearly 100%. It doesn't require any enforcement or litigation.
Compare
the cost to the millions that will be spent and wasted attempting to
handle this through legal channels.
I've been tempted to write the software myself but, wouldn't you know
it, in this market I happen to be way too busy! There's probably not
much money in it anyway because it's too easy for competitors to
duplicate, it's probably not patentable and the last part of the
process
will probably only be needed for a short time. Here's why.
Presumably it won't be too long before it's easy, practical and
commonplace to send small amounts of electronic "money" attached to an
email. Yes, I know about PayPal, but I mean REALLY EASY. Once this
capability is available, the email host or client should allow a user
to
filter email from unknown users based on a personal "cash threshold"
for
each user. For example, I could allow spam or unsolicited email into
my
system provided it has $1 earnest money attached to it. If I choose, I
could have a public policy (stated in my email reject letter) of
returning the money to any legitimate contacts. If I deem that the
email is spam, I keep the money. But, if you think about it, even a 1
cent threshold would be a very significant deterrent for spammers
(100,000 emails times 1 cent is $1,000). This last idea, by the way,
is
not my own. It's courtesy of our hero Mr. Bill Gates in "The Road
Ahead". But it's not necessary to the system anyway. I only mention it
because it's something that could replace or augment the system in the
future.
The basic idea is to make it just a little bit more "expensive", in
terms of time or money, to send email to unknown recipients. The bulk
of legitimate email is between users who know each other anyway. The
cost would be insignificant to most of us, but to a spammer it's life
threatening. Nothing is free, so there is going to be a cost to
getting
rid of spam regardless. But why spend millions trying to arrest them
all when we can just quietly remove their market?
So how about it? Any of you unemployed programmers out there want to
go
for it?
Rick Harrison
KnowWare, Inc.
>Bounty Hunting for Spammers?
>By Caron Carlson
>
>A fourth U.S. lawmaker threw her hat into the anti-spam ring this
week,
>announcing planned legislation to combat the increasingly costly
scourge of
>unsolicited e-mail. Previously opposed to measures limiting Internet
use,
>Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Wednesday that she will introduce a
bill
>that creates a bounty for identifying spammers
>
>See the Full story at:
>
>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1051282,00.asp
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-02 05:31 pm (UTC)The solution is based on forcing the machines sending bulk mail to expend some computational resources per addressee.
For example, if a computer receives a message from someone not on "favorites" list, it asks the sender to solve some relatively complicated computational problem and report the result. If a correct result is returned, the email is delivered.
Normally, the problem would take about a second of processor time. This is trivial for someone sending a handful of messages but prohibitive for someone sending hundreds of thousands of messages. If a user wishes to sign up for a mailing list, the user would be asked to add the address of the mailing list to his "favorites" list to accept messages without asking for computational passwords.
There are some fine-tuning needed for this to work. For example, a machine should remember to whom it sent messages and only compute passwords/problems for them (to prevent a spammer "distributing" the workload to others).