[Techtalk] bogus bounces--WTF?

[Miriam English]

Hi Rudy,

Rudy Zijlstra wrote:
  > Besides technical problems stated already by others there is a more
> serious reason why i would not support this scheme.
> 
> This scheme above is based on the premise that everybody can email with 
> no need for anonymity.  In most cases this will be true when you are 
> living in the western world. Even there though, you may have good 
> reasons to want anonymity (consider whistle blowers, who often end up in 
> deep trouble when doing it publicly).
> 
> More serious though, is the situation in countries like China, where 
> this may lead to prison sentences or worse.
> 
> The problem with you scheme is that it makes anonymous email impossible.

The anonymity problem you mention is a serious worry. I can't help 
feeling it could be fixed though. The confirmation that I imagine is 
nothing more than a checksum to say that the email was sent from this 
server and the sender address is correct. Sending through anonymiser 
sites could still work, though would be easy to filter out. Also, pgp 
encoding renders content safe that doesn't use anonymiser relays.

I don't believe any of the technical problems mentioned by others are 
really much of a stumbling block. They can all be overcome fairly easily 
and in parallel with current systems. We have done far more ambitious 
things before. We've all become complacent regarding spam. We have been 
lucky so far that virus makers have mostly been fools. When a smart 
virus/worm/trojan maker releases something truly dangerous exponential 
propagation could bring most of the net to its knees in just 15 minutes. 
Spam is more than just an annoyance.

Thanks for the point Rudy.

Best wishes,

	- Miriam

-- 
My time wasn't completely wasted last year.
I went on a 940 million kilometer journey.
-----
Website: http://miriam-english.org
Blog: http://miriam_e.livejournal.com