RE: CAPTCHA over smtp (yet another spam solution to discuss)

Joachim Kupke wrote on Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:46 PM -0500:

> I hope you don't mind if we take this back to the list?
>
> Brett Watson wrote:
>
> > On 11/17/06, Joachim Kupke wrote:
> > > However, the "transfer" in that suggests there may be a chain of
> > > them. I take exception to the claim that there is a fundamental
> > > need to chain MTAs.
> >
> > Mailing lists, for one reason.
>
> These would go away.  To avoid confusion, they would be replaced by
> ordinary mailboxes with read-only IMAP access or RSS or whatever.  The
> mailing list administrator makes the decision who gets to post. Either
> by whitelisting, or by requiring captchas solved, or by requiring a
> security deposit.  The latter has the benefit that they could seize
> the bond and reimburse subscribers.

An interesting idea.  Several issues:

1) Read-only IMAP is a more modern version of news.  That's been around
a very long time, but I'd still guess that more people read them via
email than news.  For better or worse, bandwidth is less of an issue
than convenience for many people.

2) Posting a bond to an mailing list you wish to post mail to would be
seen by many people as exclusionary.  Several mailing lists that I read
are unwilling to even require posters to register, as that is seen as
too
restrictive.  Though I don't agree with them, I mention it to show there
is a wide variety of opinion on what is too restrictive and I doubt that
requiring a cash bond before posting would be widely accepted.

3) Captcha's as a barrier to mailing list posting would be even less of
a barrier than for ordinary mail.  You pay someone in a poor country a
few cents to defeat the captcha for a mailing list that gets distributed
to a few thousand recipients.  That's irresistible.

--
Seth Goodman