On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 16:02:03 -0500 Michael Grant <mgr...@grant.org> wrote:
> The main problem with this approach is how does > someone send you mail if they're not on your contact list? I don't > have any magic answers how to solve that beyond what's already out > there as in return messages with captchas in them or things like Blue > Bottle seem to be quite effective. Challenge-Response systems are evil. I never reply to challenges and I typically blacklist systems that send them. There's a fundamental economic principle at play: If you make it harder for spammers to send spam, then you make it less convenient to send email to someone you've never written to before. There is simply no way around that. Rather than destroying email (its killer feature is *precisely* the ability to dash off a note to someone new) by making it harder to send spam, viable anti-spam solutions make it less likely that spam will be received. Yes, this is costly and annoying, but it's the price we pay for the convenience of email. Regards, David.
