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To: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org>
From: Mike Masnick <mike@techdirt.com>
Subject: Re: Mossberg on 'ChoiceMail': "In my tests, it cut my spam to zero."
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Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 10:09:33 -0700

At 11:49 AM 7/24/02 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Mike Masnick wrote:
>
>> Lately, a fairly large % of the spam I've been getting has been coming
>> from spam systems that forge my own address as the "from" address...
>
>Include a random token with an expiration date with anything you send.  
>Valid whitelisting of From:you@here.net yet invalid random token would get 
>blocked.

Adds to the level of annoyance, and makes it even less likely that I'll
ever use it.

>> Those spam messages would get through any whitelist I set up
>> (especially since I email stuff to myself all the time).  If
>> whitelists become more popular, I imagine spammers will resort to
>> doing that for the majority of their spams, making whitelists less
>> helpful.
>
>Spammers cannot be bothered to keep track if individual whitelists 
>associated with a given email address.

They don't have to.  All they have to do is use some program (which, if
they don't exist already, will certainly be around someday soon) that makes
every spam they send show the recipient as the "from" address as well.

>> Plus, I'm still not sure how I feel about whitelists.  I don't think I'm so
>> special that people should need to fill out a special form just to send me
>
>Of course you populate your whitelist with contents of your inbox minus 
>spam, and then add manually stuff from your addressbook.

The adding manually thing doesn't seem like much fun.  And, anytime I speak
to someone new, it just makes it more unlikely that they will be willing to
contact me.  Having played around with whitelists in the past, you'd be
amazed at how confused many people get by them as well.  They tend to
ignore the "please apply" messages.

As an aside, am I the only person around who simply does not use the
addressbook feature in email programs?  I never have, and I don't see any
reason to.  It (along with not opening attachments) has helped me not to
send out viruses to people.  I generally use my own brain or my inbox as an
addressbook, and search out the last email I received from someone and hit
reply...

>> email.  I could see certain friends of mine getting fairly annoyed
>> (especially those with multiple email addresses...).
>
>What's the point of multiple email addresses? They're a pain.

Well, yes.  *I* use one email address, but that doesn't mean all my friends
do.  You would need to convince everyone I know of that.  Most people I
know, at the very least, have a home and work email address.  But plenty
others have other addresses for various reasons.  Keeping track of all of
them for a whitelist seems like a pain.  It forces them to remember which
email addresses are already approved and avoid using others.

Plus, I know plenty of people who change jobs, and suddenly get a new email
address from their new job.  Wouldn't it suck if, in sending out your new
job info, you had to fill out a new application for each friend just to
tell them about your new job email address?

 -Mike
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