On Friday 07 February 2003 20:34, you wrote:
> Richard Lyons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > BTW, my version had an additional idea for attaching an
> > acceptable advertising system, to allow those who want to receive
> > unsolicited adverts on certain topics to define that, while
> > insisting on reachable return addresses.
>
> [...]
>
> > If you would like to see my outline spec for that, I'll happily
> > sent you it.
>
> Sure, please send it to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that myself and
> the other developers can take a look at it.
Okay, I'm attaching, inline, the outline idea as I recently summarized
it. The first bit is what you have done much better (I hadn't
thought of the 'cookies' approach, and tried to run it with extra
header fields). The second part is what I suggested for allowing
acceptable advertising under recipient control, but without
legislation.
====================================================================
PART ONE
---------
Suppose a simple addition to the normal MTAs, let's call it MTA+, were
created, designed to operate as follows.
---------------------------------------------------------------
SENDER MTA+ US (RECIPIENT)
/--------------\
send message ------> / is RA on our \ Y ----> deliver
(must have RA) \ approved list? /
\--------------/ N
|
send CIR with |
originator or top 5 lines of <--+
robot (local <------- message
MTA+ or other)
catches CIR
and replies. --------> MTA+ matches message
to reply and ----> deliver with NCF
OR
If RA was fake,
undeliverable -------> MTA+ deletes original
message!
OR
^
RA was not the real |
originator, so local |
MTA+ cannot match the |
outgoing message and |
sends a NFM ---------+
(or user does manually)
RA = return address: 'Reply to' or 'From' that really
exists and is responded to.
CIR = Confirm Identity Request. A standard header, with
a brief standard text asking sender to warn stating
'NOT FROM ME', confirm by hitting reply, or confirm
with some verbose explanation or introduction.
MTA+ at sender's end would be configured to respond
automatically. Otherwise user would have to reply
manually, but our MTA+ would be set by default
to look for undeliverables. When this system
became widespread, more specific replies could
also be handled.
NCF = new contact flag. A Standard header to allow mail
client to ask user whether to add to approved list
(RA.allow) or other filtering.
NFM = Not from me. Standard header, or message body.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Surely this would be attractive enough to a wide enough public to
ensure its rapid deployment by many users. And spamming would be
radically reduced by this. At least all spam would have to come with
an address to complain to.
Those present uses that send unusable reply addresses would simply
have to be reconfigured. Surely not an unreasonable request that
email messages likely to go to a real person should be equipped with
a reply to address.
----------
PART TWO
----------
To cope with my second supposition, and enable controlled advertising
needs only a few tweaks:
- MTA+ checks RA.allow and RA.deny and acts accordingly.
- when incoming mail is headed 'ADV' MTA+ will check to see if the
new standard header (something like 'X-adv-categ') describing
category of advertising is also filled (eg: hol, trav, comp, auc,
bizop, porn, ent, and yes, even pol - there would have to be a
public list somewhere), so MTA+ can check CAT.allow and CAT.deny.
To allow immediate use with no additions to advertizer's mail
clients, MTA+ could also look in the 'Subject:' field for
something like "ADV: adv-categ=bizop ...." which would use the
same advertising categories.
- Rejected messages get sent a standard rejection, which can state
reason for rejection.
- A further option would be to allow advertisers to send a CAT
enquiry which would allow willing users to have the contents of
their CAT.allow sent to the enquirer. The advertiser could then
build targetted lists.
- If you receive an advert that is cheating by stating the wrong
category, you can simply add the sender to your RA.deny - client
software would quickly adapt to provide a button for this once
MTA+ was reasonable widespread. More significantly,
adverisers sending off-topic (out of category) emails would get
reported to mtaplus.org (or whatever name it got) where a list
of RAs worth blocking would be kept. Each user's MTA+ would
update its RA.deny periodically from there.
The point of this suggestion is that advertisers who did not comply
with this recipient-friendly approach would be frozen out as the
system gained acceptance with end users.
=======================================================================
I expect you had already concocted something similar, but I hope that
is useful.
Regards,
richard Lyons
--
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Richard Lyons
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