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
> >
> >
> 

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