However, most of the folks on this list must work at the technical angle. How do we reduce spam by making it more difficult to spam?
I'd be interested in seeing your proof when you finish it.
John
On a deeper level, I discovered (its not at proof level, but probably at
'strong conjecture' level) that results from information theory show that
spam cannot be stopped technically. I'll write it up a bit more formally,
and post a link. (And I'll see if I can carry it out to a proof) To
summarize, I show that spam is equivalent to a covert/sneaky channel [or
rather, "sneaky channel" in the network liturature and other names in
other areas of liturature--e.g. "covert channel" is usually specific to
multi-user OS analysis, but the concepts are the same]. Then I show that
since one can't prove an information system is free of covert/sneaky
channels, it can't be proven free of spam either. And the conclusion is
that a technical solution to spam doesn't exist. Yes, there are things
that can still be done---one can continue to play whack-a-mole, but it
never gets better than whack-a-mole. There are still technical methods
that aren't fully exploited (text analysis for intent, bayesian, etc) but
for each of these things, there are countermeasures that the abuser can do
to fool them. If you want to talk information theory and spam, contact me
off-list.
--Dean
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