June 9, 2003

Washington Post: Challenge-Response May Be a Good Spam Defense, but It Requires Effort

My spin: I'm glad this issue is being discussed. While spam is very annoying, and expensive (time and money) we must consider if the solutions proposed are worse - in some ways. One spam elimination solution is a "challenge - response" system, wherein each person who sends you email must first "register" with you (or the service provider actually) in order for you to receive email from this. While this would work, it puts up a huge barrier to the free flow of email - especially for businesses.

News Clip: "Completely rids your inbox of spam"? "Eliminate almost all junk e-mail messages"? Those sound like the kind of too-good-to-be-true claims you might expect to see in, say, a new piece of junk e-mail.

But several Internet providers are making this pitch in all seriousness. They might even succeed, but not without forcing major changes in how e-mail works. (full story)

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