Re: Potential goal: recipient control of data transfer

At 23:02 04/02/03 +1100, Brett Watson wrote:

>Users want fast access to their mail. They do not want to be delayed by the
>downloading of N megabytes of unwanted data (like a load of viruses). This is
>particularly so for those who are still on dial-up access. Those who are
>bandwidth-billed also do not want their expensive bandwidth wasted. They do
>not want other people to be able to mailbomb them or DDoS them with mail.
>
>These goals point to a protocol in which the recipient can be very selective
>about the data transfer process.

I regularly use such a feature with POP, on first try only downloading
10KB or less of a mail is indeed a great way to eliminate a lot of spam
and virus bytes and very few interesting bytes. For some time I only
did that when on a trip (dialup), but now I'm doing it all the time.

So I agree that it's an interesting and useful feature.

Regards,   Martin.