Decius wrote:
] ] Four Internet pioneers discuss the sorry state of online
] ] communication today. The consensus: It's a real mess.
]
] Farber, Templeton, Crocker, and Nielson on Spam.
]
] I wrote my boss today and told him that I think Challenge
] Response is the future. Vipul's Razor is pretty cool and it
] might work out, but baring that, its going to be CR.
]
] CR is not annoying. You only need to authenticate with someone
] once, and only when you first email them, and only when you
] email them first.
] CR can be expanded to operate as a hash cash system when the
] spammers adapt to it.
] As people only need to authenticate if they aren't already
] whitelisted, there is no COST associated with CR for mailing
] list operators, dotcom companies, and other legitimate bulk
] emailers.
] CR never prevents an important legitimate message from
] reaching its destination.
] CR kills spam dead. Spam can ultimately be completely
] prevented in a CR system.
]
] Its just a matter of time. I setup a CR system... Setup more
] and more ways to populate the whitelist information. Meet
] people in person? Get their email from their pda via IR and
] then whitelist them... Share whitelist information with a
] network of friends... Eventually when the spammers start
] getting into the whitelists, make the challenge require a math
] problem be solved. Initially this will look like a PGP block
] in your email that you will have to cut and paste into a
] webpage. You will only have to do this once to talk to
] someone, and only if you've never talked to them before, and
] only if you initiate the conversation. Eventually your email
] client will handle it in the background... THAT is the moment
] where everything will be fixed. The process of authenticating
] you will BLEND back into the background and the internet will
] SEEM exactly as it is now, except there will be no spam.
]
] THAT is the future of email and that is how we are going to
] get there. Go write perl.

i agree... i think hashcash is an especially good long term solution. i don't even care if the calculation has to happen for every single email -- making my email client spend 30 seconds doing math in the background is not going to affect me one bit, but it'll sure affect the spammers. perhaps also you could set adjustable levels of "payment" on an account... easier or harder problems based on how easy you want people to be able to send things to that address. anyway, i see things going this way as well. it's not a difficult solution technically and it seems like it'll be nearly 100% effective.

the key, as you allude to, is getting through the transitional period. you have to make it easy enough that people who don't get a lot of spam will accept it, rather than say "My AOL account already filters spam... why should i do this other thing?"