[LINK] NYT/SMH: To beat spam, pay to send email

[Dr. Bob Jansen]

I'm still having difficulty understanding why we can't use plain 
vanila digital signatures to at least provide a way for me to filter 
all unwanted email, including spam.

  I raised this some time ago on Link.

If I have my private key and I use that to sign all emails from me, 
then if you want to read my emails, your email reader uses my public 
key to accept the email. So, as no spammer will have my private key, 
they can't forge my authenticity through the digital signature (if we 
can believe the security of such keys as claimed by their developers).

Allocation of keys could be done as part of the process of signing up 
for email accounts by the service provider. This would also act like 
an approval process for those providers as ones who are lax about 
letting out private keys would not get much, if any, business. ( I 
would have thought that this would be extra revenue opportunity for 
those providers).

If you and I had a business relationship or we wanted simple 
communication, then we would download each others public key into our 
email environments so all emails from you and I would get through 
automatically. For those emails for which I didn't have a public key, 
I would need to manually approve each by getting the relevant public 
key from a key server and then I could automatically assign a filter 
to not approve emails from that address if I wanted to.

I agree that this would necessitate updating all email programs, but 
as these are being updated continuously anyway, this would happen 
over time. It would also require an international response which 
would be more problematic but could be done through some of the 
international agencies with Fed Gov support. I can't see any 
unresolvable problems, if spam is the big and costly problem it is 
claimed to be.

It would also implement a wide digital signature system which would 
be useful in other areas such as online commerce. (Is the Aus Gov 
still pushing that barrow?)

I already pay to send emails, through subscriptions to services, etc 
and I don't want another payment especially if BillG controls the 
purse strings. I also already pay to read emails, through those same 
subscription payments.

bobj

Dr. Bob Jansen
Managing Director,
Turtle Lane Studios Pty Ltd,
Physical: 1 Turtle Lane, Erskineville, NSW 2043, AUSTRALIA
Postal: PO Box 26, Erskineville, NSW 2043, AUSTRALIA
Phone & Fax: +61-2-95 19 99 85
Mobile: 0414 297 448
Email: Bob.Jansen at turtlelane.com.au
WWW: http://www.turtlelane.com.au/

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