[CS-FSLUG] My analysis of the email spam problem

[Norbert Bollow]

Aaron Patrick Lehmann <lehmanap at cs.purdue.edu> wrote:

> How is e-mail peer-to-peer?

What I mean is that each mailserver is a peer in the peer-to-peer
network of mailservers, and everyone who wants to is free to operate a
mailserver, which can be implemented in free software.

An example of an anti-spam approach where this peer-to-peer nature
of email and the corresponding freedom would likely be lost is the
"pay-for-email" scheme that Bill Gates has been pushing.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18201953

> Peer-to-peer would be if I sent my email directly to your computer.
> I don't.  I save it to a spool on my copmputer, which later forwards
> it to your isp's mail server, which you contact in some way to
> recieve.

Actually I run postfix myself, both for outgoing and for incoming
email; hence when you send me email, it won't go via my isp's mail
server.  But you're of course right that what you describe is the
common case.

> Secondly, I think the scheme of pay-for-email has been proposed,

Note that that's not the same thing as what I'm proposing.  In
my proposal, solicited email, reponses to personal email, and emails
which the recipient does not find annoying are not subject to any
artificial cost.

> More troubling, what's to keep your ISP from declaring all your email
> to be SPAM, taking the money check from te spam, and not forwarding
> your email to you?

That kind of problem can be avoided by not giving your ISP access to
the secret key which your email program uses to sign the "this email
is considered annoying; send the money" message to the escrow server.

Blessings,
Norbert.