Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 11:47 AM -0800 12/31/96, Lucky Green wrote:
>At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>>The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a
>>dollar per message.  (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he
>>sees fit.)
>>
>>We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which
>>already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms.
>
>I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this
>list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message.

I'm a skeptic in general, and am particularly skeptical of schemes to
charge money, to meter usage, to distribute "posting tokens," and so forth.

Dedicated posters--and I will not make an artificial distinction between
cross-posters, insulters, essay writers, and "me-too"ers--will of course
pay the $1 to post a message. (For example, the "save big money now!"
spammers would probably willingly pay $1 to "reach" 1000 subscribers.)

On the other hand, students and misers will probably just drop off the list
completely. Is this a good outcome?

I'm not against _market_ solutions, but such artificially-imposed solutions
as mandating a fee, or token, usually result in distorted markets.
(Needless to say, if John Gilmore _chooses_ to impose a posting fee, this
is his right. Caveat poster.)

And why, exactly, is a _posting_ fee a good idea? When I write an essay,
either a short comment like this one or one of my much longer essays on
some topic, I am contributing my _time_....in fact, I should be _charging_
money, not _paying_ money! (I'm joking, of course, as the infrastructure
and habit is lacking...people simply will not set up digital cash systems
to pay, say, 10 cents for an article...this has been proven time and time
again. Whether it changes over time is unknown, but for now it's a moribund
idea.)

And there do exist market-based solutions, at least to the S/N problem: the
various filtered lists, notably that of Eric Blossom, Ray Arachelian, and
maybe others. And anybody is free to establish their own such list. Those
who want their list delivered in encrypted form (for whatever strange
reason) can contract for such a server....I think this even existed for a
brief time. Ditto for anyone who wants _only_ the dandruff-covered missives
from Vulis. And so forth.

The temptation to try to think out solutions to spam problems is strong...I
watched (and participated in) discussions of this consume the Extropians
list for several months...ratings systems for posters, a fee to join the
list, tribunals for politeness offenders, and other "private justice"
systems. Not a bad idea to discuss such things, but I concluded that most
of the efforts were either futile or counterproductive. I know others
disagree, and they can speak up. (I haven't been on the Extropians list
since early '94, and I don't see much traffic copying that list, or
referring to that list...is it still operational?)

Stopping "unwanted mail" from going to the main list--which is of course a
completely different kettle of fish from offering filtered lists--has
really only two main solutions:

1. Moderation by a human reader.

2. Posting only allowed by subscribed readers, with manual approval of
subscription requests.

Both have problems. Nobody I know of has time or interest in approving
posts, and this would significantly delay discussions, and probably kill
them (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of
view). Nor do I know of anyone I would want deciding if my essays were
"appropriate." I've watched a lot of moderated lists turn into the private
fiefdoms of the all-powerful moderators.

(On the other hand, the RISKs forum is a roaring success, for various
reasons. The focus on reports of security, safety, and computer bug-related
incidents is perhaps a major reason. Peter Neumann's dedication--and SRI
affiliation, which condones him spending his time on this, I think--is
another.)

And as many have noted, allowing only subscribers to post eliminates
anonymous posters, except by the clever workaround of having subscribers
pass on the anonymous posts. That idea has merit, but also has drawbacks.

For myself, I just make liberal use of filters and am quick on the "D" key
to delete posts that have no interest for me. Even with 100 messages a day,
the 60-70 that make it past my filters can be disposed of in less than half
an hour, including downloading time and spending a few seconds on each
deciding whether to discard it, keep it around for later viewing, keeping
it around for a reply, etc.

--Tim May


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."