Re: e-postage stamps, was Welcome to the new(ish) ASRG list

Chris <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.ietf.asrg
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Cool

Hadn't read that or anything like it. Even though its not new, a system of 
refundable stamps may well be a system worth revisiting. Nothing else has 
worked.
in 'my version' refunding is not optional. when you validate the stamp it is 
automatically refunded and is also 'used'. similar I guess in the way that 
bitcoin works.

For me I do a lot of government work. It frightens me that governments and 
banks and utilities are actively teaching people to become victims of fraud 
because they insist on using email for personal communications. The most 
frightening of these systems does not involve email at all. I had my banks 
automated system phone me and then ask for my 'security response' so it 
could pass on a message. Absolutely crazy. yet when I rang and spoke to them 
and followed it up with a letter describing why it was so dangerous their 
answer was "it works for us".

One government project I was recently on, we proposed signing all the emails 
sent. Sadly the mail provider stated that previous attempts had failed 
because Outlook's handling of signed emails was patchy and poor. So we fell 
back like most do to unsigned plain text emails.

The idea of hashcash has always made me chuckle.

Regards
Chris

On 17/03/2013 1:12 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
>> Unlike Bill Gates proposal I want to reduce the senders cost to as close 
>> to nil as possible (except for spammers of course).
>>
>> I was thinking when you pay your monthly fee to your ISP you get a 
>> certain number of stamps. As long as the recipient accepts the email the 
>> stamp is "refunded"it goes back into your stamp bank. If your ISP wont 
>> play ball you can collect your stamps as an individual or organisation.
>
> This, ah, isn't exactly a new idea.  You might want to look at the white 
> paper I wrote in 2004 about e-postage.
>
> It's #2 at http://www.taugh.com/
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, [email protected], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for 
> Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
>
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