On 9 September 2014 05:38, carlo walentiny <[email protected]> wrote: > Let's divide all the people on planet > earth into three sets: > > {1} people you know; > > {2} people you don't know but who know [something about] you > which makes them think that you would be interested in getting > to know them/talk to them about something of mutual interest; > > {3} people who don't know you -> some of these write botnets > that spam you because of an x% chance to make some money. > > If we break it down to 4 sets, you have
1. People you have talked with 2. People that want to start a conversation with you 3. People you have asked for updates from (email subscriptions) 4. The rest is probably spam As mentioned previously, 1. is easy. 3. Could be giving a password/identifier when subscribing. The mail user agent can know the current password and add the sender to the whitelist when the subscription confirmation comes in. The password could be encoded in the email address, and would be changed frequently so if the password is leaked spammers can't be added to the whitelist. I'd like to propose for 2. that the message come with a resume-able proof of work. For example, a chain of proof of works starting the hash of your public key and the recipient's. When wanting to start a new conversation you include a 'gift' of say, 30 seconds of work. The amount is arbitrary and the recommended level would depend on whether spammers are bothering to show proof of work. If the mail isn't replied to, the sender can retry with double the proof. I think being able to sort the list of unknown senders by the level of proof isn't perfect, but is a pretty simple idea that solves most of the problem. (imaging your spam folder sorted like that). It relies on the spammers not being able to generate the proofs much cheaper than regular senders. Something like Cuckoo Cycle might work if it's GPU resistance holds up. The mail user agent would show in the 'unknown' folder a list of new senders, sorted by the amount of work put in. The user is then able to look at the highest priority down.
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