The Shays-Meehan Spam Finance Bill

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, 2002-02-28 at 11:46, Russell Turpin wrote:
> Gordon Mohr writes:
> >A simple approach that could be used much more would be to:
> >   - Only accept mail from a "whitelist" of approved addresses
> >   - When mail comes in from any other address, bounce it
> >     with a reply that explains how a thoughtful person
> >     could (via a subject token or web-page action) can get
> >     their next message through
> >   - Once something gets through at all, add the source to
> >     the whitelist, unless you specifically choose otherwise
> 
> The problem is white list management. Assuming I'm on your
> white list, you'd like to get my email, regardless from where
> I send a message. I might be at a different email address.
> You really want to identify the *person*, rather than the
> email address. For that to work, senders have to use a common
> identity mechanism. And ideally, you'd like the same white
> list to function for your email, cell phone, Blackberry, and
> other incoming channels.

You're over-engineering things, here. 95% of the population sticks with
one email address and with one email client. And the other 5% likely has
other options, anyway. True, this is getting less and less true
(particularly wrt cellphones) but at the moment I wouldn't at all be
surprised if it is even more than 95%- more like 99%. There are only two
people I know who regularly switch email addresses between more than two
accounts, and one of them is forced to because she is in Africa and can
only access one account in each village/town she visits.

Luis