I have to wonder if we are making the problem of spam more difficult than it really is.
What if I just want to be able to give out my email address to friends, relatives, coworkers, and acquaintances, and get email back from them. What if I want to receive opt-in messages from a few mailing lists? -- not the kind that subscribers participate in, just the ones where content is sent to subscribers weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly? What if I just want shop at Amazon.com or ebay occasionally and receive notifications about my order status via email. If those are the conditions -- and they are for very many people -- why should I have to live with the spam nuisance? There is a very simple solution: to those individuals or organizations that I want to receive email from I give a password. That password is included in the email message sent to me, and my filter checks for that password. No password -- no entry. It's that simple, really. I probably need only three or four passwords. And I may need to change one from time to time, if it is ever compromised.
What needs to happen? E-tailers like Amazon.com need to allow customers to enter their password when they enter their email address, and they need to allow their customers to change their password. Mailing list providers need a similar facility. Address books need to store a password. Email client applications need to send the password automatically if it's in the address book. But before any of this can happen, we need to define the standard for how passwords are used. Perhaps the easiest way to use passwords is to embed them in the email address, so that john.doe@someplace.net with the password geewiz71 becomes john.doe+geewiz71@someplace.net. That solves the address book problem -- no extra field is needed.
Come on. How difficult can this particular spam problem be?
The Age of Innocence on the Internet is over. If you want people to stay out of your mailbox, put a lock on it and give the key to those who are allowed in.
Posted by Doug Sauder at May 29, 2003 12:10 AM