Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp

On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 03:29:21PM +0000, Ian G wrote:

Peter Gutmann wrote:

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Barry Shein writes:

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Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services.

And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it.

Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this.

My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed.

Better start on those defenses now then- there is already significant amounts of IM and SMS spam. I would be suprised if the people designing IM and SMS systems have learned much from the failures of SMTP et al. Eric