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

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Over the weekend I went to Playa del Fuego, which is a mid-Atlantic 
offshoot of the annual Burning Man festival:
http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-may03.html
http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-burn-may03.html
http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-pavilion-may03.html 
http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/playa-del-fuego-camps-may03.html

Like Burning Man, there was a heavy geek contingent and also a substantial 
Politech nexus too. Rob Carlson -- a longtime Politech subscriber -- has 
some links to other writeups:
http://epistolary.org/rob/

-Declan

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http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1009745.html

   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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