Re: [Asrg] Shannon Jacob's article on spam

Just piggyback it on top of SMTP. Only one server needs to check for
postage, and all the others can ignore it. In fact, there's no reason to
force any sort of transition. People could opt to have a prepaid email
account and still use their old accounts (with discretion) just as they are.

Not really fair to claim to be a typical user, but using my own situations
as examples, my primary interest would be in an email address I could use
publicly in the newsgroups. I really think the possibility of dialog was one
of the factors that contributed to the higher quality of the 'old days'
before the spammers started regular harvesting. Another usage for me would
have been "recovery" of one of my primary email addresses that was detected
by the spammers. Actually too late now, since I eventually gave up and
killed it, but it was one that I had used for many years, and I was sorry to
lose it. In both of these cases, the prepaid email system would allow
someone to use those email addresses if they really wanted to reach me, at a
small cost.

Profiting from admediation is not particularly attractive to me, though
that's obviously where the big incentive would lie for many people. The
problem to me is that I really value my privacy, and probably wouldn't want
to give much of my personal information to the admediator in any case.

Kee Hinckley wrote:
> At 6:00 AM +0900 5/20/03, Shannon Jacobs wrote:
>> However, I've already said that I think the obvious solution is to
>> provide an alternative cash-up-front email system. There are plenty
>> of things wrong with snail mail, but it does work quite effectively
>> in limiting the volume of physical spam we receive
>
> How would you make the transition to the system?  For some period of
> time, anyone who has committed to the new system cannot afford to
> discard normal SMTP mail.  That is a commitment of time, software
> installation, money (for software and/or sending mail), and risk
> (some other solution could succeed). During that period of time he's
> getting just as much spam, but is paying more.  How do you persuade
> people to ignore the negative economics of being an early adopter?

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