Playa del Fuego and weekly column on perils of CR antispam-ware

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

At 11:08 PM 5/29/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> Spam blockers may wreak e-mail havoc
>    By Declan McCullagh
>    May 27, 2003, 4:00 AM PT
>
>    Here's an unhappy prediction: The explosion of spam-blocking
>    technology could herald the death of much legitimate e-mail.
>
>    I wrote about patents relating to this technology, known as
>    challenge-response technology, last week. Basically, when your mailbox
>    is protected by a challenge-response system, people who try to contact
>    you will be greeted with a response saying something like "click on
>    this link to deliver this message" or "type in the word you see in the
>    box above." The idea is to block increasingly obnoxious spam bots but
>    still let actual humans get in touch with you.
>
>    In theory, well-designed challenge-response utilities won't challenge
>    mail from known correspondents or mail that you've actually asked to
>    receive. Unfortunately, many current challenge-response systems are
>    poorly designed, which could wreak havoc on mailing lists and other
>    legitimate communications. This could make e-mail far less useful than
>    it is today.
>
>    It's already starting to happen. SpamArrest.com began challenging
>    mailing list messages last year. Recently Mail-block.com and
>    iPermitMail.com followed suit.
>
>    When that happens, the operator of the mailing list receives a
>    message--from each subscriber using the poorly designed
>    challenge-response utility--that asks the list operator to respond to
>    the challenge. Replying to a handful of challenges is no big deal, but
>    if many subscribers start using poor challenge-response software, it
>    will pose a serious problem for mailing list operators. Big
>    corporations may be able to afford to hire someone to sit in front of
>    a computer and spend all day proving they're not a spam bot, but
>    nonprofit groups, individuals and smaller companies probably can't.
>
>    [...remainder snipped...]

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