Carey,
> Not to be horribly snide Jon: Your question does not even sound slightly snide. > But have you noticed a decrease in the number of overall emails you > receive as well as the decrease in spam messages? No. I've been using TMDA for a few years now. So far, so good. > I'm always curious how many folks share Eugen's opinion-- I've rarely > come into contact with c/r systems, and oddly enough, when I have, > most of the challenges get routed to my system's spam filter. These are probably either pseudo-challenges, the result of a poor whitelist configuration. > There's some sort of amusing irony in that. Yes. I think there is irony, but the irony is non-specific. All available systems seem to fail in some manner; without strong cryptographic signatures, commonly-agreed-upon certifying authorities, revocation lists, and an automated system to keep it all up-to-date, nothing seems to work very well. False positives/negatives will almost certainly occur with any system that tries to infer what is spam and/or what should be challenged. I have not had anybody tell that their email could not reach me since I began using TMDA in 2004. Email is not the only channel of communication, so I think the idea that I don't hear about problems because I can't get their email does not make very much sense to me. -Jon > > Carey > > On 3/13/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > Eugen, > > > > > >> On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 07:22:13AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> > >> > If someone emails you out of the blue, they must reply to a > >> > trivial challenge to be placed in the "confirmed" list. > >> > >> I never answer to these on principle, and ban anyone who > >> uses that spam source camouflaging as an antispam solution. > > > > > > > > That's fair. > > There is a small cost of your time to talk to me out of the blue. > > > > If it's not worth it to you, clearly your communication to > > me must not have been very important to you. > > > > > > > >> I would also send a nuclear missile to the ip2location, if I could. > >> Unfortunately, I ran out of those, and need to restock. > >> > >> > There's no question for them to answer, the just need to hit > >> > reply to the challenge the very 1st time (they do not need to > >> > resend the original message). If this is too much, you > >> > can pre-clear them, or hand out a temporary address (TMDA > >> > makes this easy). You can also "whitelist" certain domains. > >> > Read the docs for more info. > >> > > >> > At first, I was put off by the idea that I would be creating > >> > a small amount of extra traffic, but when you count the bytes, > >> > >> You're not creating extra traffic. You're sending unsolicited > >> bulk email. > > > > > > > > My on average, my confirm challenge is about 800 bytes. > > Your reply will cost a few bytes too. Let's be generous, > > and say the whole thing adds up to 1k bytes. Thus, I'm > > generating about 300-400k bytes of traffic, total. That's > > about the same amount of traffic you'd generate by looking > > about about 5 extra news articles, or about 10 seconds of > > a steaming video. > > > > While there was a day when the "wasted bandwidth" argument against > > challenge/response was legitimate, that day has long past. There's > > plenty of bandwidth to go around. > > > > I'd never object to someone watching an extra 10 seconds of > > a news clip per day. Why would they begrudge me this? > > If they did, I'd suspect our relationship has other problems. ;) > > > > > > > > > >> > it's really nothing. I also worried it might be considered > >> > anti-social. I've been using it since Nov 14, 2004, and so > >> > far there has not been a single complaint from anybody. If you > >> > >> You won't receive a complaint from me either. I will just blackhole > >> you for good, and that would be it. > > > > > > > > > > Fair enough. > > > > However, at that point the sender would be confirming > > my suspicion they didn't really want to talk with me, > > and our entire relationship (or our potential for a > > relationship) was viewed as virtually worthless to > > begin with! I'd be delighted to rid myself of such > > would-be correspondents. > > > > > > > >> > are sick of spam and tired of "smart" filters that never quite > >> > seem to work, give TMDA a try. You can also use TMDA along > >> > >> To paraphrase Alan Perlis: > >> When someone says "I want a spam filter in which I need only > >> say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. > > > > > > Do Alan Perlis pat people on the head, and give out gold stars too? > > An attitude like that won't get Alan Perlis very far. > > > > > > Cheers, > > -Jon > > > > >