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Spam Your Rights Online

One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time 322

Posted by timothy from the here-are-my-rates dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent article in the IBM Systems Journal describes an innovative solution to curb both spam email and telemarketing. In short, the potential recipient of a message/call advertises the potential cost of contacting him uninvited. If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted. The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token. The author also provides for a more detailed description."
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One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time More

One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time

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  • This'll work (Score:2, Informative)

    by Robert Hayden ( 58313 )
    This will about as well as asking spammers to remove you from their lists.
    • A better solution to spammers has recently been dealt with on the online comic, Userfriendly.Org

      http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=2002120 7

      followed by

      http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=2002120 9

      Cthulhu knows how to deal with spammers.

      Chuck Firment

  • Would be nice... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pr0c ( 604875 )
    This however will never work... spammers only spam because for the majority of them its free/very cheap

    • Re:Would be nice... (Score:2, Informative)

      by domselvon ( 588072 )
      Which I think is the whole point. This will slow down the sheer amount of spam that is getting into our inboxes because it will no longer be the cheap alternative.

      • Re:Would be nice... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pr0c ( 604875 )
        Are you assuming this would be a world wide law and fully enforcable? Or did you forget that there are hundreds of other countries that do not have to abide by any of our laws in the US. A good majority of spam already comes from outside the US.

        • Re:Would be nice... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
          The idea is that you'd block any email that didn't have a token or wasn't whitelisted. Kind of a pain setting up a whitelist for everyone who might me non-spam email. Also, by the time the token is read, you have to except full delivery, and can't kick back a 550 error letting them know the email was dropped into /dev/null.

          It's actually an idea that's been kicked around for years.

    • Re:Would be nice... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bje2 ( 533276 )
      i dunno, i still get plenty of junk mail in my snail mail box...i'm guessing those companies don't pay the normal 37 cents an item mailing rate (i'm assuming they get some sort of bulk mailer rate? am i wrong?)...in any case, i don't think this would really be any different for e-mail spammers...they could probably absorb the cost of a few pennies an e-mail...

      also, from this previous article we know that approxiately 1/4 of 1% of spam gets a response for a company (let's assume that means a product order)...

      so, if a company send out 1 million spams, at 5 cents a spam (for nice round number), that's $50,000...they can expect a response of 1,000,000 * .01 * .025 = 2,500 people...if they're making a $20 profit on the item, they've broke even right there...

      that's probably not a realistic business model though, i didn't include the fact that most companies don't send their own spam, they pay others to do it, so that's additional overhead...5 cents an e-mail is also probably too much, it would probably be less...
      • i'm guessing those companies don't pay the normal 37 cents an item mailing rate (i'm assuming they get some sort of bulk mailer rate? am i wrong?)

        You're right. They get a break because they're presorting the pieces of mail and bundling together the pieces that go to the same ZIP code, which saves the Post Office a lot of work. On the other hand, they have some restrictions on what kinds of mail can be sent at this discount. It all has to be the same (in a given mailing), if not enough pieces are going to a 5 digit zip, then a higher rate applies (for 3 digit zip, and then if not enough there, they have to pay full rate), and so on.

  • But actually, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sheriff_p ( 138609 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:41AM (#4854180)
    Bill Gates suggested this in his book, "The Road Ahead"... Microsoft? Innovating? Why yes...
    • Yes, Bill Gates wrote about his idea in "The Road Ahead." But he wrote "The Road Ahead" as "Bill Gates, a guy in the computer industry," not "Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft." Just because Bill Gates has an idea, that doesn't mean that Microsoft will implement it or even think about it very much.

    • Re:But actually, (Score:5, Informative)

      by jjo ( 62046 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:18AM (#4854514) Homepage
      It's hardly original with Bill. For example, in Robert Heinlein's 1966 book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", he outlines a similar scheme. In Heinlein's book, he deals with actual visitors at the door, but the basic concepts (pay for interruption, and only collect if the interruption was unwarranted) are the same.

      I wouldn't at all be surprised if the idea even predated Heinlein.

      • I think Lawyers already practice this technique.

        A friend of mine went to a lawyer to discuss her divorce case. After hearing her out, he simply said, "Sounds Complicated." And declined her case.

        A little while later, she got a bill for $300

    • Esther Dyson as well (Score:2, Interesting)

      by xeno-cat ( 147219 )
      Mentions this scheme in her book "Release 2.0", 1997. This was a popular idea amoung ultra capitalist "let the market handle it" folks in the mid 90's. Nothing new.

      One point made in "Release 2.0" is that the cost of sending spam would vary depending on the importaince of an individual. I might only be able to charge a penny to a spammer for sending me an e-mail but Bill Gates might command $100 or more per spam.

      I don't really like the idea myself. Basicaly, if I tell someone to stop sending me junk I should expect that they will be compelled to stop, otherwise I should be able to sue for harrasment.

      Kind Regards

  • not a half bad idea... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bje2 ( 533276 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:42AM (#4854185)
    actually, not a half bad idea...i figure if i accepted 5,000 spams/calls a day, at 5 cents a call, i could make it my full-time job...what the heck would i list as occupation on my income taxes though...

  • Mr. Spammer, I am publishing my price: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:42AM (#4854187) Homepage Journal
    Your head. On a plate.
    • >Mr. Spammer, I am publishing my price:
      >Your head. On a plate.

      Morden: "What do YOU want?"

      Vir: "I'd like to live JUST long enough to be there when they cut your head off and stick it on a pike in front of Verio headquarters, as a reminder to the next ten generations that some things come with TOO high a price. I'd look up into your lifeless eyes, and I'd wave - just like this. (gives happy little wave). Can you and your associates arrange that for me?"

      - Spamylon 5: "Over the Coals"

  • Waste (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sc00ter ( 99550 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:43AM (#4854206) Homepage
    First off, if it's telemarketing all you have to do is ask to be put on a do not call list. If they call back within a year then they just gave you $500 - See http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/telemarketing/ [978.org]

    If they're spammers good luck collecting since most of the time the headers are all forged anyway or they're coming from some asian country.

    • ,i>First off, if it's telemarketing all you have to do is ask to be put on a do not call list. If they call back within a year then they just gave you $500

      have you actually tried to get the real company name out of a telemarketer? they just simply hang up on you... your idea is great if they play the same game as you. They dont ... telemarketing is a scumbag business and they play by scumbag rules.

      if they didn't then why do they block the caller ID information? why dont they say "Hi this is ___ from XYZ comapny and we want to sell you ___ for ABC company..."

      they don't. they do their damnedest to hide who they are so you cant use the law and/ or stop them from annoying you.

      • Re:Waste (Score:3, Informative)

        by Sc00ter ( 99550 )
        Umm, what are they selling you? If it's a slinkey just call the slinkey company and tell them that the company they are using to do their telemarketing is doing so unlawfully. I'm sure they'd be more then helpful (I've actually had to do this for some telemarketing scumbags that were trying to get me to get the local paper, the newspaper compay was VERY agry and ended up dumping them as telemarketers)

        • The slinky company isn't the one calling you. It's a telemarketing company contracted to SlinkCo. So, if you opt out with that telemarketing company, on their current SlinkCo promotion, nothing stops you from getting another SlinkCo call, placed by a different telemarketer.

          Likewise, nothing prevents the first telemarketing company from calling you back about your subscription to Time.

    • Re:Waste (Score:3, Informative)

      by droid_rage ( 535157 )
      Who cares about forged email headers? There's almost always an address or link to their site, and in Washington State, you can send a bill for $500 for each spam to the address listed on the domain registry for the link provided in the email to order whatever product they're selling. All you have to do first is register your email address in a public directory as a Washington State resident.
      If you're interested Here's some more info [wa.gov]
    • Pardon me, but I thought it was rather interesting how all the proposed solutions in this white paper, while innovative, neato, and rather cool, still involve my spending more money to get rid of a problem I shouldn't have in the first place.

      I absolutely love how there's a whole section involving means for businesses to make money from implementing the scheme, but the part where he notes that all of us poor schmucks who actually get bombarded with spam and telemarketing calls will have to "upgrade" to newer phone sets and e-mail programs (no doubt with a cost) is just glossed over. Isn't most of the problem with spam and telemarketers that they cost us money already? How is paying more supposed to make us feel better about making them (we hope) go away?

      Surely there's got to be some way of dealing with this problem without spending more money, without enriching the telco robber barons (at minimum), or at least by using money we're already going to spend anyway (coughcough where's the CRTC when you need 'em?)...

      I'm reminded of possible "forced" upgrades by other entities -- regarding Microsoft software, HDTV, DVDs, CDs, and I can only stop to wonder if IBM might, were this scheme implemented, be conveniently right there with a plug-in for your phone or something... (Always look for the ulterior motive, sez I.)

  • Not a good idea... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Azzaron ( 562255 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:43AM (#4854208)
    You FINALLY found a girl who think enough of you to use the phone number you gave her. She's hot, sweet and intelligent with a great sense of humour.

    "You must agree to pay this geek 5 cents a minute while talking to him," a nasally voice greets her after she dials your number.

    "FUCK THAT!"

    There goes the love of your life...
    • You FINALLY found a girl who think enough of you to use the phone number you gave her.

      My dating research shows you should get HER phone number, not give her yours. You get a couple big advantages out of going this route:

      - If she won't give it to you, you know you're barking up the wrong tree and can move on.
      - If she says yes you're in a stronger position than you were "waiting for her to call you." I mean, how often does that work out?
      - Plus you get to appear strong and self-confident in her eyes when you ask for the number.

      Hey, asking for her phone number isn't a marriage proposal, it's nothing to be afraid of or nervous about. If you feel comfortable asking, chances are you should. After a while, you'll get better at it, develop your own technique, and find yourself surprised at the number of numbers you get.
    • She's hot, sweet and intelligent with a great sense of humour. You must agree to pay this geek 5 cents a minute while talking to him.

      No, this is slashdot. WE pay THEM to talk to us.

  • Wishful Thinking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tri0de ( 182282 ) <dpreynld@pacbell.net> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:45AM (#4854227) Journal
    "But however much the phone companies may profit from the current situation, it is generally bad business to continue a practice that infuriates the vast majority of your customers."

    -Yeah, right. Bwahahaha

    Tell that to anyone who flies on a regular basis.
    Or has cable TV, etc, etc.

    (an aside-
    do any other geezers here remember Lily Tomlin's routine way back when :
    "No, maam, we don't care. We're the phone company, we don't have to.")

    • "But however much the phone companies may profit from the current situation, it is generally bad business to continue a practice that infuriates the vast majority of your customers."

      Why didn't anyone tell the movie and music industries?

    • Irony - then there's the recent reporting here at /. that the phone companies (heck, even many state DMVs) are selling your name and number to these people in the first place.

      Also, yes I loved the Lily Tomlin bit. Esp, the one where she pulls a plug out - "whoops! There goes Cleveland!"

    • Not SO wishful (Score:3, Interesting)

      by siskbc ( 598067 )
      In general, I share your laugh. But if you wait long enough, some company will generally try a more customer-centric approach, assuming the market is suitably open and people are REALLY pissed. There are small airlines attempting this (Jetblue, Midwest Express) to go with one of your examples. And DirecTV has MUCH better service than any cable company I've ever dealt with (and much better prices).

      I know talking about our supposedly-deregged local phone market is really a joke, but think if a company tried this approach: "Our service costs the same, and we WON'T sell your number to telelmarketers. We have ACTIVE telemarketer-proofing tools. We are anti-spam."

      I think it's possible, and if the telemarketing problem were to explode like the spam problem, I think we would see it. Right now, though, I don't think it's quite annoying enough - don't know about you, but I'm not getting 15 telemarketing calls a day...yet. So there's not enough consumer outrage now to get a huge customer base.

  • I've seen various permutations of this idea thrown around on slashdot before.

  • Large problem with this: Unexpected relevant calls (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chuckfirment ( 197857 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:52AM (#4854285)
    The article talks about using "Interrupt Tokens" that you can give out as a one-use token to interrupt (email spam, telemarketer call) you. If the person contacting you doesn't have an interrupt token, they can't contact you without paying your "Interrupt Fee", the fee that you set for contacting you.

    I often get calls that I don't expect, and I need to take them. I can't have people unable to contact me about a business deal because they don't want to pay my "Interrupt Fee". They'll say, "Eh, to heck with it. I'll give the deal to the next guy down the line."

    For telemarketers, I use the key phrase, "Place me on your do not call list." I get maybe one telemarketer call every other month, and normally those are recorded messages.

    Chuck Firment
    • You didn't read the article very carefully. The caller has to agree to pay the fee IF YOU WISH TO COLLECT. If a long lost friend calls he has to agree to pay the fee, but you don't have to collect the fee and he doesn't get charged.
      • Some people will never get tokens due to privacy issues, just the same way some people will not subscribe to the free subscription required New York Times.

        Many view any of these blockers as having their hand out or a huge No Tresspassing Violators will be Shot sign on the front lawn. A do not call sign like this will keep me from calling.

        Weeks later if and when I see you, I may let you know you forgot to include me on your white list, and it may have been an oversight. But if you don't wish me to call, I'll respect your wishes.

        Now if you want to enable it only for blocked calls or toll free (telemarketing) calls, I have no problem with that. Anonymous Coward marketers should be blocked.

  • old hat (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @09:56AM (#4854334)
    This has been suggested again and again. It was an old hat even when Bill Gates talked about it a few years ago.

    The problem has always been that there simply is no feasible payment mechanism to support it. If we ever get micropayments in some form, then people can implement this.

  • As if... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:00AM (#4854360) Homepage Journal
    Let's face it: the only attraction of UCE for spammers is its cost: sending the same message to thousands, or even millions, of people costs them close to nothing.

    Which is why spammers will never adopt a solution such as this one: it would reduce the pool of potential clients (read: complete idiots) willing to receive UCE and it would raise their costs in an unacceptable way.

    I mean, I agree to receive all the spam you want to send me... as long as you are ready to pay one million dollars per email. How is that for a fair price?

    This scheme is interesting, in a theoretical sort of way, but it has much of a chance of becoming a reality as, say, flying elephants.

    Or, uh, a cold day in hell.

    And, of course, my opinion is exactly worth what you paid to read it on Slashdot... ;)
    • The only way to work this system in is to say, "Fine, spammers, send all the mail you want on SMTP/POP3... nobody's using that protocol set anymore."

      When the standard for e-mail is dramatically reworked to rebalance the resources involved so that the sender has to pay for more than the receiver, spam will quickly go away.

  • And I live in .... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mustangdavis ( 583344 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:01AM (#4854369) Homepage Journal
    la-la land!!!

    I also heard that world peace is just around the corner!

    I'm sorry, but this wouldn't work without totally restructuring the current "email system" and phone system

    This would also destroy the ability of organizations that are truely good in nature to advertise. I make this bold statement because if something like this goes into place, then people will want to get paid for watching TV commercials and for looking at billboards. Hell, the average Joe wouldn't have to work since he/she could get paid just to look at their advertisements! This could truely stunt the growth of our economic system.

    Besides, do you think this would actually work? The companies would claim this violates their freedom of speech rights, and since companies have money to pay off politicians and to pay off phone companies, do you REALLY think this would ever happen???

    However, I do agree that SOMETHING needs to be done to stop this rediculous mass advertising that goes on, but I don't think that is the answer (or atleast not in its current form)

    One of the hilarious solutions that I have come up with (well, I think it is funny) for phone spam is somehting like this:

    • The jerky phone salesman calls my home
    • They begin telling me about who they represent, what they are selling ..... yada,yada,yada
    • I rudely stop them and say "To continue this call, you will be charged $3.99 per minute. Please provide me with your Visa, Master Card or Discover card number and expiration date ... sorry, no American Express."
    • They either continue with their routine and I rudely interrupt them again or they ask me to repeat what I just said
    • I repeat my credit card line ...
    • They either laugh and hang-up, or just hang up (either way, they go away)
    • If they have the nads to stay on the line, I tell them to immediately remove my name and number from all of their calling lists, then hang-up myself


    Anyway you look at it, I win. I get entertained, my number removed from their calling list, and a laugh from the telemarketer sometimes.

    However, (and most seriously), this type of system must be implimented in such a manner that the phone companies and ISPs don't make a dime off of it, otherwise the problem will grow ... not go away as we'd all like it to.

    The only solution to this is simple ... pass a law that forbids companies from sending mass advertsiements to people where people must pay in either time or services to recieve that advertisement ... unless they sign up for that adverstiement!!!! (this means email and phone) ... and make the penalty VERY expensive for violating the policy. If they do it from a foreign country, ban the sale or import of their product into the country! This isn't the total solution, but it is the only way I feel that the people may be finally able to be "spam" free
    • One of the hilarious solutions that I have come up with (well, I think it is funny) for phone spam is somehting like this:

      * The jerky phone salesman calls my home
      * They begin telling me about who they represent, what they are selling ..... yada,yada,yada
      * I rudely stop them and say "To continue this call, you will be charged $3.99 per minute. Please provide me with your Visa, Master Card or Discover card number and expiration date ... sorry, no American Express."

      That sounds like fun. I'll have to try that out.

      I've got the call-blocker service, so I don't have any live telemarketers calling me, but I did have this one company that constantly left automated sales pitches on my voice-mail. So one day I changed the outgoing message to mention that any unsolicited marketing messages left on my voicemail will be charged a US$5,000 handling fee. Sure enough, the company left another automated sales pitch on my machine. I called the number and asked for my money. I was soon talking to a manager who conferenced with my voicemail. He appologized and made a bunch of pathetic excuses. I told him to forget about it, and maybe he should consider another marketing technique. I haven't been bothered since.
    • > Anyway you look at it, I win. I get entertained, my number removed from their calling list,
      > and a laugh from the telemarketer sometimes.

      You only win if your time and what your were doing at the time means nothing to you. That's what bothers me the most about telemarketers, they never ask whether they are disturbing or not.
  • The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token.

    Ok so how long until spammers/telemarketers figure out how to spoof themselves (like they do with my email address) to send to things via people's whitelists? Or write a virus or spyware to silently add themselves to the whitelist?

    I think it's a good idea but I doubt it'll actually work in practice. Anything that can reduce the spam I get (my college email account has finally been infested) it a plus. And if it makes me a little scratch on the side, all the better!
    • like snailmail, you pay in advance for sending the mail and the receiver can choose to refund that money.

      use something like paypal or whatever to do and validate the payment. the sender will receive a ontime key that allows them to send the mail. all of this will be automated by pressing the 'send' button.

      people on the whitelist will receive a permanent key.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Unfortunately, slowing down a spammer would not correct the problem.

      If I were a spammer, I'd simply buy a whole lot of P-100's, set an email spamming program to them, hook them to a DSL line, click and walk away.

      Sure, it's going to take a long time, but it's still going to work at the click of the button. With little to no cost for a setup fee, it's still easy money.

      Chuck Firment
    • It wouldn't affect the mass spammer much if at all. All that he has to do is start a few more threads, and the # of messages sent per time period end up the same.
  • Since we don't have micropayments, maybe a better approach is to have senders pay in terms of useful participation in grid computing.

    A distributed system like SETI@Home, or maybe your own grid, can hand out cryptographic tokens for work units (say, a CPU minute), and the sender can then use those tokens to reach recipients.

    In essence, the tokens act as digital postage stamps, but the payment is in useful CPU cycles, not useless cryptographic computations or money.

  • The point isn't to enact some kind of law or regulation forcing spammers to pay $0.05, it's to setup a way for reputable spammers (oxymoron I know) to pay for their advertisement space to you personally. In theory it would be a good idea, but so many things are good ideas in theory and no in practice..

  • Tragedy of the Commons Revisited (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:12AM (#4854469) Homepage Journal

    For most people, unsolicited bombardment by advertisements is regarded as "part of life".

    It would be really great to change this mindset not only in terms of internet based advertising, but also for telephone direct marketing, bulk mail advertisers, and billboards.

    At least with TV and radio there's a transaction of sorts going (not that I want to give credence to Jack Valenti's position that people fast forwarding through commercial messages are "thieves"; it still costs me the inconvenience of fast forwarding, but my cost is less): I get to watch some show I value and suffer some inconvenience of advertising that I suffer.

    With billboards, the property owner gets money for placement of the advertisement, but the public gets the mental pollution without gaining any benefit. [I won't buy the argument that being informed of products and services is an inherent benefit: when I want to buy something, I'll research it and find out about it then.]

    Sound economic theory can be applied to advertising. Explicitly crediting and charging consumers and producers of advertisements would be a positive step towards making this a reality .

    The catch is that getting people to agree that their collective attentions are worth something is a political problem. And the same economic theories that could potentially be applied to advertising are already being applied at the overriding level of what I will call "government services", such as legislation controlling advertising. It is in the financial interest of advertisers to have the public place no value on their attention.

    Thus, this good idea will have to wait until the public wakes up.

    • Just want to point out something ...

      At least with TV and radio there's a transaction of sorts going (not that I want to give credence to Jack Valenti's position that people fast forwarding through commercial messages are "thieves"; it still costs me the inconvenience of fast forwarding, but my cost is less): I get to watch some show I value and suffer some inconvenience of advertising that I suffer.
      Your cost isn't the inconvenience of fast forwarding, it's the extra you pay when you buy products at (say) the supermarket, where a significant portion of the price goes to support the advertising costs of the manufacturers.

      The net effect of the current system is that we pretty much all pay for TV advertising, regardless of how much or little television we individually watch. If you value watching TV programs, but don't buy much, then you're coming out ahead. If you never watch TV but regularly buy things at the supermarket and department stores, then you're subsidising advertising agencies and indirectly, the producers of television content.

      Given that in all likelihood you are paying for TV shows every day, you might as well watch them if you care to do so, without any twinge of guilt for skipping over the adverts.

      • Your cost isn't the inconvenience of fast forwarding, it's the extra you pay when you buy products at (say) the supermarket, where a significant portion of the price goes to support the advertising costs of the manufacturers.

        When you need to buy something, specifically avoid anything you've seen advertised. If companies begin to see a negative correlation between advertising and revenue, they'll be forced to rethink their marketing model or risk going out of business.

        (place obligatory "when pigs fly" comment here)

  • I've been doing this for some time. It works like this:

    • You have a whitelist of domains and adresses.
    • You also have a blacklist of domains and addresses.
    • Every mail from a sender in the whitelist is accepted.
    • Every PGP/GPG-signed or encrypted mail from a sender NOT in the blacklist is also accepted.
    • Everyone else will get a mail back and have to click on an URL (or reply to the confirmation mail) confirming his/her message to me.
    • Double bounced addresses land in the blacklist.
    Bang, zero spam.

    Remember to put your business partners on the whitelist though. ;)

    -- Jens

    • So what you are saying is that you might have to reply to their reply? This system could get ugly and increase mail traffic by a couple fold.

      That is annoing and bad for the Internet as a whole

      Besides, if I'm spamming, I'll just use a diffrent PGP key for each different piece of spam mail I send out. You'll never stop me. Muhahahahahaha!!! j/k

      ***** bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ******

      Wrong answer ... try again later

    • If you have zero spam, why do you:
      • Have a separate email address for slashdot mail? I presume your regular email address isn't "slashdot".
      • Spam-protect your email address by inserting no-spam into it?
      Inquiring minds are curious how much email you still get. --Glassware

    • Re:Simple solution: Require PGP/GPG sig/encryption (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:59AM (#4855203) Homepage Journal
      Sometimes I think PGP is the answer to half the world's problems. It's just a rockin' way to authenticate. And once you have a verifiable identity attached to each message, you can assign reputations to identities and filter that way. There are sooo many applications for this stuff. We just have to start building that web.

      But as usual, the catch is getting people to use it. Until your grandmother uses it, she's going to have the same rep as an anonymous spammer, so you can't rely on it.

      I finally got my inner circle of friends to start using PGP/GPG, and it took some serious nagging over a long period, even though they are computer geeks. I've tried to suggest keysigning parties at local Slashdot Meetups [meetup.com] (and even went to a 2600 meeting) and there is just no interest. If Slashdotters and 2600 people aren't interested in PGP, and my geeky friends won't do it w/out nagging, then forget Joe Schmoe, it's not happening. The tech is here, but society Just Says No. It's very sad to see so much wasted potential.

  • Not news (Score:2, Interesting)

    by iamacat ( 583406 )
    Token ideas appeared long time ago, including I believe on slashdot. This is way too complicated. Better to just use signed e-mail for most communications. Each user will have a key signed by one of certificate authorities. Anyone - like your ISP - will be able to be a CA, with the only requirement that each key has to be tracable to the real person and the CA itself must have a valid, real-world contact information. Each CA will choose a policy on what kind of messages are valid.

    The first time you get e-mail signed by a new CA, you will see it's policy and decide weather to accept messages signed by it. A typical ISP might state that any messages are allowed as long as it doesn't break local laws and is not an uninvited commerical contact. Another CA might support spam-free anonymous e-mail by signing each message directly instead of signing a user's key and charging a fee for each e-mail to make sure it's important communications and not just mass marketing. You can even have a "Disney CA" which only allows family-friendly messages for those so inclined.

    Either way, if you accept a CA and then get a message that violates it's policy, you will forward it back to CA. If they agree, they automatically charge a fine to the violator - let's say $100 - and send you (most of) the money. Or for more serious violations than spam, actually send you real-world contact info for that person and/or notify the autorities.

    If the CA fails to respond, you can block it. Pretty soon there will be web sites to rate various CAs and filter out spam-friendly ones.

    This scheme doesn't have to be implemented all at once. Some ISP - say AOL - can release an e-mail program that puts signed messages in a separate group in INBOX. The idea is that you will encourage your friends to sign up for AOL because this way their messages will not get lost in spam. Then as the system becomes more popular, people will require all their messages to be signed and stop checking the second group.

  • Vanquish [vanquish.com] is a startup
    that does try to sell a system like this. The idea is similar: You get some kind of certificate from them to sign your email. Other vanquish users will accept only 'signed' email. If you receive a signed email that turns out to be spam, you can get reimbursed for your time by the sender.
  • In a few weeks bayesian spam filtering will be in Mozilla 1.3 and all this will be moot

    • Re:wait a few weeks (Score:2, Insightful)

      by vrai ( 521708 )
      Yes because Bayesian filters are 100% perfect and spammers never-ever attempt to circumvent them. Clearly I also missed the announcement that Mozilla had been ported to PDAs/mobiles so business people (i.e. people who live in the real world and not with their parents) can take advantage of this flawless filtering technology.
      Either that or you're just trolling for Mozilla (which we get enough of from CmdrTaco) and have no idea what you're talking about.

  • Can this work? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:23AM (#4854557)
    I just don't see how this could work. There appear to be too many technical issues involved, not least of which is implementation. First of all, you have to assume there will some "e-token standard." Next, you have to assume Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and all the other free-email services will support it. You can do a proxy server on the clients for other mail packages, but anything web-based will have to be adapted to it.

    Next you need to somehow distribute the tokens to these different systems. This seems to require some sort of integration between the token provider(s) and the e-mail systems and web-based e-mail services.

    I just don't see it happening to fix something that can be handled pretty well through filtering. The fact is, e-mail filtering software is making great headway these days. Baysian filters, collective filters like Cloudmark's SpamNet, and so forth.

    One idea I had was for a white-list proxy. The first time someone sent you an e-mail, it would hold it in a queue. It would send them back a message asking them if they're sure they want to deliver the message (99% of spammers won't get past this point). As the recipient, you would would be notified of their intent to e-mail you and then validate whether or not you wanted to allow mail from this new sender in the future.

    It has problems as well, but it's infinitely more implementable than the idea this paper proposes.

    • Re:Can this work? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by theduck ( 101668 )

      Everything you're talking about is simple barrier to entry and therefore only half of the question. The other half is "Is there a sufficient profit potential to make it worth surmounting the barrier to entry?"

      First of all, you have to assume there will some "e-token standard." The lack of an existing standard can actually help a first mover. Create a "standard" that makes your life easier, set up your code to isolate the implementation of that standard so you can replace it if necessary, and publish your "standard" if you want it to be widely adopted and become "the standard." As a first mover, you need to be aggressive but stay agile.

      Next, you have to assume Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and all the other free-email services will support it. No you don't. Create a service of your own. Make it free to users if you want to compete with Yahoo, et. al., or charge users if you prefer. This is the crux of the matter. Your system provides them with a benefit. How much are they willing to pay to partake of that benefit and is that enough to cover your startup costs and operating costs and provide you with a decent ROI (note to open source proponents: ROI doesn't necessarily mean cash...it can be as basic as that great feeling you get by having contributed to something successful)? Alternatively, provide those email providers with an easy way to implement your system and charge them for the opportunity to provide that benefit to their users. There are plenty of potential revenue models available. Again, the main questions are ROI and acceptable risk.

      Next you need to somehow distribute the tokens to these different systems. Yes, but developing a solution to this is just another startup cost. If this is the key enabling technology for the system, perhaps you base your revenue model on providing this and letting Yahoo, et. al, worry about the rest.

      I just don't see it happening to fix something that can be handled pretty well through filtering. The author of the article covers the shortcomings of filtering. Of course, this system would have to be significantly better than a filtering system (or easier to implement for the end user...or more effectively marketed...) for it to be worth the premium or it will never generate a profit.

      Most new technologies look impossible to implement at first. Focusing on the possibilities rather than the obstacles is what separates entrepreneurs from 9to5ers.

  • Been there, done that (Score:5, Informative)

    by macterra ( 75505 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:24AM (#4854561)
    I worked for a company Javien [javien.com] that implemented this solution for email last year. The product was called Bouncer and would sit in between your email client and POP3 server. When it received a message from someone that wasn't on your accept list, it would bounce it back with a contract that could optionally include a request for payment. This was hooked into Javien's micropayment system, so if the sender accepted the terms of the contract they could attach a digitally signed proof of payment with the email when they send it again.

  • Not new at all, first proposed before 1985 ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:25AM (#4854576)
    In R.A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Hazel Stone (posing as Gwen something) uses a similar system to protect her messaging system: Spend some money to record an urgent message to her and she decides on whether to pay you back or not.

    Give that the book was published in 1985, I would say the idea is pretty old.

  • Just one question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hellfire ( 86129 )
    Telemarketers find any way they can to get around the do not call lists. "No sir this is not an unsolicited call. You sneezed while visiting our website so this gives us the right to call you back with other offers as given in the agreement on the website."

    If telemarketers can get around do not call lists in order to avoid being fined $500 (and some don't really care if they are fined or not), do you actually expect them to pay 5 cents to some guy who said it costs that much to call me with a solicitation?

  • This still doesnt solve the problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:30AM (#4854602)
    Obviously we could all switch to just allowing accepted-only people to contact us, or requiring confirmation from a person before accepting a message, but this doesnt solve the problem of registration forms which require you input your e-mail address. You know, for things like Forums, Online Purchases, Your slashdot account, they require a valid e-mail address to have confirmation sent to the user. Are these forms going to respond well to such a system? Are they going to respond at all?
    Best case: You never recieve your confirmation because your mailer drops the message and the system you are signing up for doesnt respond to replies
    Worst case: Your mailer replies to the message asking for confirmation, this is taken to be the confirmation the system was waiting for, you are signed up for something you didnt mean to sign up for.
    Even worse: Two of these bounce off eachother, you are sent a bill for 200 million dollars, and your ISP drops you because you were DoSing their mail server.

    Uh-huh. Everything I said is 100% true. Really.

  • roblimo.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <.mohr.42. .at. .osu.edu.> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @10:34AM (#4854641)
    If you're wondering how something like this can be implemented, look at the email agreement on http://roblimo.com/
  • My price is hereby set at $12million (USD) per minute. Please, please call me. Call me day and night; call me at 3am; call me during dinner. For $12million, you can call me during sex. Not only will I cheerfully listen to your entire pre-determined message, but I will ask questions - oh so many questions, and not necessarily about the product you're selling.

  • Consider that the most profitable business strategy in the current business environment is 1. monopolize market for a given product or service, 2. screw customers who now cannot turn to competitor, 3. profit (no joke). Now apply that strategy to the "pay-me-to-spam-me" service and what emerges IMHO is an opportunity for someone to make money on a service that is currently free. I, for one, will not be paying a monthly fee to the token seller for "service", nor will I be arguing with their nearly nonexistant customer support when someone either circumvents them, hacks them, corrupts^Wpartners with them, or buys them out. Besides, I've already set my asking price for "spam time" - effectively infinity. If I had ever received a spam that wasn't an obvious ripoff then I might feel differently. I'll keep filtering spam myself for *free*, thank you.
  • If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted.

    This is already happening in the UK (and most of Europe) for phone calls. It's called making the person who makes the call pay for it.

    Yes, I know there are 101 issues about why this couldn't really happen in the US however it means that this sort of thing is rare and if I ever get called by a telemarketeer they pay for the whole call. Which is nice.

  • um, ok.

    while i'm at it, why don't i license the right to rob my house?

    this whole platform presupposes that companies should have the ability to interrupt some people. what if we don't take that for granted? what if we presuppose that nobody should be interrupted at all?

  • RTFA!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by ThinWhiteDuke ( 464916 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:11AM (#4854960)
    Wow, more than 100 posts already and still 90% of posters obviously did not grasp the (rather) simple concept. I've seen a number of completely irrelevant objections:

    The law would never pass : That's one of the best feature in this idea. No need for a new law. The recipient already has the right to block incoming messages. You know, when your phone rings, you won't go to jail if you don't take the call.

    Spammers will never accept this : Of course not, but nobody asks them! Using this kind of solution is YOUR decision; you don't have to ask anybody's permission, especially spammers.

    Widespread adoption will never occur : So what? This system will work for me even if I'm the only user. It's not one of those things that require a critical mass of users to be useful.

    This will not completely eradicate spam : Frankly, I don't care. If it prevents spam sent to me, it's good enough.

    5 cents to read spam is not worth it : You're missing the point. This is not about making money, it's about discouraging spammers. No spammer will ever send you an email if it costs him 5 cents. And the price is not for making you actually read the spam, it's only for allowing it to reach your inbox. In the very unlikely case a spammer actually pays, just delete the message as usual.

    So please, read the article. The idea may not be completely new (email stamp) but the details address most obvious objections.

    One problem I can think of is still pending : what happens if the sender is also equiped with a similar system? Will we see payment notices bouncing back and forth between both ends without ever reaching an inbox? I guess a solution would be to automatically whitelist any address you've sent an email to, if only for 1 hour.
    • Widespread adoption will never occur : So what? This system will work for me even if I'm the only user. It's not one of those things that require a critical mass of users to be useful.

      Actually, this *is* a stumbling block. It won't work without widespread adoption.

      Let's suppose you decide to do this. Then someone decides to email you, and your system replies with a request for a nickel. If the person getting that request doesn't know about the system, they won't be able to give you a nickel, so they'll just phone you (or take their business to someone else, if they were planning to do business with you).

      If adoption were widespread, then it would work well. Most people send about the same amount of email as they receive, so they'd just get used to having an account that was sometimes positive, sometimes negative.

      Mailing lists send much more than they receive, so they'd have to start asking people to whitelist them in order to sign up. (And if the system weren't widespread, they wouldn't know to do this, and you'd have trouble joining. Do you know the name of the sender for a mailing list before you join it? Sometimes yes, usually no.).

      Spammers send much more than they receive, so this would reduce the amount of spam a lot. But as others have said, it wouldn't wipe out spam: you get paper junk mail, don't you?

      The other (bigger) stumbling block is the lack of a micropayment system. Put that in place, and lots of people will join a pay-to-email system. Without it, the system doesn't work at all.
  • The electronic stamp - a pattern of bits attached to the message - costs the sender some amount of money. The recipient (or the recipient's mail software) can examine the value of the stamp and, based on that, decide whether to read the message.

    Super. Look folks, I still get hoards of snail mail spam every day that I have to sift through, the printing fees of some of which far exceeds the 30 for postage. Will we get as many spams about pleasing pudenda under this scheme? Probably not, but we'll still get spam.

    And what's more, if and when this becomes the standard, we'll have to start paying to send all these quick emails to our friends and relatives. Yet another marketing scheme conquers what was once a free (and Free) Internet. I suppose it's time to start implementing POP4 based on Gnutella.

    Spam filters are getting more and more intelligent every day. If they aren't good enough for you and you don't want spam, don't give out your private email address. But please oh please don't give away the last remnant of the free Internet. I see Microsoft and AOL warming up to getting thrown into the briar patch again.
  • Everyone you care about is on a whitelist, everything else requires a monetary fee before you'll view it. If you're feeling like you don't want to talk to someone, you go and raise your non-listed communication fee to $10 or so. Otherwise you keep it at 50 cents or so, letting people who you don't otherwise know call you for a low amount (this also happens to raise the cost of telemarketting and spam to the point where you don't have to bear the burden of its cost).

    I can't remember if it was Peter F. Hamilton or Greg Egan who had this in a story of theirs, but it's as old as the hills :)
  • If this happens, I'm blasting an email address all over China and Hong Kong so all the chinese language emails display as scrambled symbols on my iMac.
  • You give me sendmail with the capability to do this and I will install it.
  • This dovetails nicely with the article yesterday regarding big political donors demanding access to politicians.

    So - I guess money really *IS* speech.

    - -
    A few years ago, I saw a mathematical proof based on the concept of;
    time=money
    and the physics definition of "work" which proved that the more money you make, the less you work.

    I guess the speech=money corellary built upon that is; the less you work, the more you talk?
  • would be to simply overwhelm the spammer with false positives.

    Spam generates at the very most 0.01% orders for the advertised product. What if 10% of recipients replied to the spam asking for more information, a borchure, or a sales representitive to visit a (false) address?

    This would make it unconomic for the company theat the spam is being sent on befalf of to trawl the repies for the one real enquiry per thousand.

    Implementing this would require a bit of effort, but running it for a year or so could prove very effective.

  • Idea not that good nor that new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by btempleton ( 149110 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @01:18PM (#4855723) Homepage
    The author cites at the start of his paper, my own article on this concept [templetons.com]. Many people have come up with this idea independently, and while I was one of the earlier ones, proposing it at USENIX in 1996, it has earlier roots as well in places like AMIX and others.

    In fact, I seem to get a mail every week from somebody who has just thought up this idea!

    However, since being an early proponent, I have decided it's not so good an idea after all, though it can form one component of an anti-spam strategy, particularly for dealing with how to continue to allow anonymous mail in the anti-spam world.

    At the heart of it, spam is the abuse of bulk mail, so solutions should attack the cause, not the symptoms. Undesired non-bulk mail is still undesired but it is not in any remote way a critical problem worthy of a complex solution, and we have decided as a socity you should not have any right not to be annoyed, though you can have a right to not have your mailbox overwhelmed. (Just as a ping is not on offence, but a ping-flood is.)

  • Before you say, "BULL" read below (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SloppyElvis ( 450156 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @01:37PM (#4855871)
    This system is pure fantasy.

    One question: in what way could this system possibly prevent somebody from creating a bot that would read SPAM all day long and get paid for it? If this goes into place, I'm sure to make zillions as my computer gladly signs up for SPAM, opens it, and deletes it for me.

  • once i get my mailserver set up, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cosyne ( 324176 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @05:49PM (#4858297) Homepage
    i'm just gonna change my address to i.unconditionially.agree.to.pay.one.dollar.per.kil obyte.received@cosand.org and just send invoices for email i didn't want. Looking through my inbox, there's a pretty clear size differential anyways: emails containing information from my friends and colleagues seems to run 1.5 to 3k, while spam and junk from the university buearacracy runs from 8k up to a few tens of ks. Depending on how bored i get, i could sue to collect on some of the more expensive ones. I'm not sure it would hold up in court, but one the other hand, it would be fun to stand in court and ask the defendant "which part of 'i unconditionally agree to pay' weren't you clear on?"

  • I like the current method (Score:3, Funny)

    by WebMasterJoe ( 253077 ) <joe&joestoner,com> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @11:32PM (#4860088) Homepage Journal
    I like the current method to cut down spam:

    1. Get an online publication to write an article [freep.com] in which a spammer brags about his expensive home
    2. Tell thousands [slashdot.org] of geeks [slashdot.org]about it and present a thinly veiled challenge to find the guy's address
    3. ????? [slashdot.org]
    4.Profit!!!!


    Sorry, once I got to number three I couldn't resist :)

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