Re: TMDA (was: new spam functionality added)

[Lloyd Zusman <ljz@asfast.com>]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> * David Masterson <dmaster@synopsys.com>  on Tue, 06 Aug 2002
> | Also, if needed, a system could be set up for this purpose that allow
> | people with these accounts to send limited numbers of email within a
> | given time period, thus making the system unattractive to spammers.
>
> I like the idea of just making the system unattractive to spammers without
> making it unattractive to Joe Average.

Agreed ... and for that reason, I putting my two cents in to support
Hashcash.

And I also support TMDA and others of its ilk ... because in my
experience, very few "Joe Average" type folks that I know have had a
problem with the couple extra keystrokes or mouseclicks that are
necessary to send the initial confirmation message.  In fact, several of
my "Joe Average" correspondents have written back to tell me that after
being introduced to TMDA via my email account, they are off to try to
install it and use it themselves.

In the ideal email world that I'm envisioning today, there would be some
sort of combination of hashcash and confirmation.  Most people I know
would consider this to be a small and quite acceptable price to pay for
spam reduction.

In the case of a the small minority who are dead set against email
confirmation (and yes, in my experience so far, it IS a small minority),
I'd be happy to pre-whitelist those people if I really want to
communicate with them ... many of them are vocal about their opposition
to email confirmations, which makes it easy for me to identify a lot of
them before I communicate.

There will still be the occasional person who wants to initiate contact,
but who is morally opposed to my confirmation system, and who therefore
decides not to follow through once he or she discovers that I'm using
such a system.  Even in that case, I can see the initial email that this
person sent, since I keep a "pending" queue that I review once or twice
a day.  And if I want to respond to that person, TMDA easily allows me
to "release" his or her email and to whitelist the return address.

So I can still respond to that person, who then has the choice as to
whether he or she wants to continue communicating with me, without any
need for confirmation.

I believe that only the most die-hard anti-email-confirmation zealots
would refuse to continue communicating with someone with whom they
originally initiated contact, from whom they received a confirmation
request that they ignored, and from whom they subsequently received a
gracious reply anyway, with an explanation that confirmation is no
longer necessary for them, because they have been whitelisted.  And I
wouldn't lose a whole lot of sleep if an person like that would refuse
to continue the email conversation that he or she originally initiated
with me, and which I voluntarily chose to continue anyway, under these
circumstances.

So for me (and I believe for lots of other "Joe Average" folks), a
TMDA-like system is useful and desirable.

And as I mentioned, that in combination with hashcash would go a long
way towards significantly reducing spam.


-- 
 Lloyd Zusman
 ljz@asfast.com