Re: Spam Control Considered Harmful

["Justin W. Newton" <justin () priori net>]

At 12:55 PM 10/29/97 -0800, Scott Hazen Mueller wrote:
> > From: Phil Lawlor <phil () agis net>
>
> Welcome to the discussion, Phil.
>
> > > a large-scale re-structuring of Internet mail to provide for secure
> > > authentication and cost sharing for received e-mail.
>
> > What if the equivalent of "caller ID" was built into sendmail?  Making sure
> > that the sender is a valid email address.
>
> It's a necessary precondition, but not sufficient by itself.  Also, simple
> address verification may or may not be enough.  There is no statute or case
> law that makes the owner of an address legally liable for the mail emitting
> from there - this could be an issue for claims of forgery and the like.
>
> The above notwithstanding, assume for the sake of argument that one could
> develop and deploy a secure mail system that authenticated message origin to
> the account level.  This would meet the first requirement, and could
> *possibly* be the infrastructure for building the second.  However, limiting
> anonymity likely wouldn't provide a strong deterrent by itself, since
spammers
> could still run through multiple non-anonymous dialup accounts over the
> lifetime of a spam campaign.

Slow down there folks.  Disallowing anonymity on the net is another
/serious/ issue.  If you need reasons why...

1) Incest and Rape support groups.

2) Political speech

Just keep on adding your reasons below, but please don't forward them to
the list.



**************************************************************
Justin W. Newton                        voice: +1-650-482-2840  
Senior Network Architect                  fax: +1-650-482-2844
PRIORI NETWORKS, INC.                    http://www.priori.net
Legislative and Policy Director, ISP/C   http://www.ispc.org
"The People You Know.  The People You Trust."
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