Re: A Zero Spam Mail System [Feedback Request]

[Matt Harris <matt () netfire net>]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2019 at 9:23 PM <valdis.kletnieks () vt edu> wrote:

> > [Today's discussion is about whether I solved the spam problem. Not
> about how
> > I'm gonna distribute the solution]
>
> You apparently don't understand that how the solution gets distributed is a
> very important part of whether the solution will work.

If only everyone would change everything about how they do everything
overnight, pay me/my company, and trust me/my company as a central
authority... well, we'd have no problems, *I guarantee it!*

I tried whole-assedly skimming the first two dozen pages of his pdf doc and
switched to half-assedly for the latter several hundred pages.  My
take-away is that he has a company called dombox/teleport, and if we pay
him to authorize us as not being spammers, then we're not spammers.  But
instead of simply that, also every system and the way everyone uses email,
including trusting him as a primary point of authority, has to change
before it works.  Page 121 states that every website on the entire internet
will need to implement his buttons.

There's also some rather onerous sounding stuff around page 115 where he
states that users won't be able to delete their email accounts, or the
contents thereof.  So I'm pretty sure this system is entirely in violation
of European law.


> > "Now, what if your first mail get rejected with an error message like
> "Unauthorized Sender"?
> > Would you still write your follow-up mail? No, right?"
>
> At which point you totally miss the point - for a spammer, the reasonable
> thing to do
> is *send another mail with a different From: value*, in hopes of hitting
> one that's
> an "authorized sender".

Further, most recipients can't be burdened with having to authorize every
potential sender.  Systems implementing that logic have been implemented in
various and sundry places, and never for very long.

To save everybody else the effort:  As far as I can tell, he's re-invented
> plus
> addressing, and says that if everybody creates mailboxes
> john.smith () example com
> for personal mail, and a john.smith+nanog () example com for nanog mail, and
> john.smith+my-bank () example com for his bank emails, spam will apparently
> give
> up in defeat

I'm pretty sure there was something in there about paying him to act as a
central authority too, you've gotta half-assedly skim another hundred pages
to get to it, though.

Take care,
Matt