Re: TMDA (was: new spam functionality added)

[Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> Yes, and many times when I start to communicate with someone is that I
> post to a mailing list or UseNet group and some other person (unknown
> to me beforehand) replies to me personally.

This was quite common on Usenet 10 years ago, but has become
increasingly rare with the rise of Spam.  In fact, an increasing
number of new (post-August) users consider all private replies to
Usenet messages abuse.

I hope widespread use of TMDA-like whitelists will counter that
saddening trend, so that you once again will be able to contact
strangers you have meet on the net, without getting your message
treated like spam.

Today email is for most part a secret id only shared by a select group
of friends, quickly discared when it leaks out of that circle.  A
single extra message the first time you send mail to a new person seem
to be a small price for restoring email to the universal and open
medium it once was.  

And I have no sympathy for those who claim that they can handle having
an open email adress without relying whitelists, and from that
conclude that everybody else must be able to handle the same.  People
have different amounts of time and different amount of skill for
automatic and manual filtering.

Without whitelist filtering, keeping the email handle secret is,
tradically, really the best option for the majority of people.