Maurits wrote:

I think this is a very bad idea.

Loadsgood wrote:

This was Bill Gates' idea. I wonder if he's going to implement it, he probably won't since the critics out there hated the idea. So do I, there are a lot of ripping off people involved in this, probably a crack to make the sender pay more, and just to much risk all up. It would make a lot less people use email,  and over all you would have to attach your money account to your email account (as in have a secret section in your email setup with your bank details, which there probably would be a crack to find out).

phunky_avocado wrote:

Ok, I'll bite...why?

Maurits wrote:I think this is a very bad idea.

Maurits wrote:

Because email should continue to be free.

Manip wrote:

It is the equivalent to charging someone for going down to the beach and drinking out the sea.

Jeremy W. wrote:

Maurits wrote: Because email should continue to be free.

Why?

Jeremy W. wrote:

Maurits wrote:Because email should continue to be free.

Why?

Manip wrote:

What we really need is senderID up and running with the patents dropped... we need very public black-lists of bad domains/IP ranges and we need the ISPs to get off their collective asses and to do something about zombies. Like limiting machines in their network to sending 500 e-mails per day per machine (using IDS type devices).

Allow people to opt out of the 500 message limit by paying £1 per month. That way the clueless bunch who get infected by zomies will only be able to send out 500 spam a day each, and the ones that opt out should be able to defend themselves.

All of this will of course 'solve' nothing, but with it you should expect a massive reduction in global spam (-20% in a year).

ZippyV wrote:

Shreyasonline, you forgot that spammers use zombies to send mail. Spammers are not sending mail from their home computers.

Maurits wrote:

phunky_avocado wrote: Ok, I'll bite...why? Maurits wrote: I think this is a very bad idea.

Because email should continue to be free.

EDIT:
Don't charge me to send -
I already pay enough
To my ISP.

Jeremy W. wrote:

The "email postage" idea isn't a new one (though congrats for thinking of it). The idea has been to charge something fractional like .01 cents/email. People who send a hundred emails a day will only pay 1 penny a day, or less than a dollar a month.

But, folk who send millions will cost more.

The "free to a friend" idea's an interesting one, but wouldn't that require a whole new email system? After all, email is effectively transient: once it's left each email server, it's completely forgotten (gotta love SMTP).

How would you imagine such a system working or being implemented practically?

Manip wrote:

Are you stupid?

Do you need to make five posts? You see that button with a pen , it is an edit button, which means you can edit your posts .. USE IT!

Maurits wrote:

Have you looked into the "Bonded Sender" program?

Maurits wrote:

http://www.bondedsender.com/

Basically it works like this
Company X puts up a bond (say, $10,000)
Then the Bonded Sender service adds this company to their publicly queriable database

Later, Company X sends you email
Your email server checks the database and notes that Company X is bonded
All further spam checking is skipped for that email! (yay)

Suppose at some future point Company X actually does send a spam to someone

That someone complains to Bonded Sender.  As a result, Company X loses their bond! (ouch)

Also, here the receiver does not get anything in return. Whereas in the idea I am talking about, the receiver of e-mail gets paid. The money he receives by e-mail can be reused for sending an unsolicit email to someone else he wants to.

Keep in mind that a SPAMMER/ a HACKER can never be stopped. They will find some or other idea to do what they want to do. So why not allow them what they want to do and regulate their activity? This idea is all about regulating and making email a more secure, trustworthy and reliable system to use.

Beer28 wrote:

here's the bottom line about why your idea isn't going to go anywhere.

There may be a new standard in the future, but it won't be decided by you. If you make a new mail transit protocol and start using it, it will not be accepted by the majority of server admins and ISP's

It just won't.

A standards board will have to get together to create a new protocol for email. Just like X.400-500, MIME, SMTP, IMAP, ect...

Did Microsoft's MAPI become a cross platform standard for network email?
And they're microsoft. You are you.

The most you can do is provide an extra layer on existing protocol, which by nature is wide open. Lots of companies have already done this, and no one has emerged as a defacto standard. My wild guess is that your idea won't either.

Maurits wrote:

http://www.bondedsender.com/

Basically it works like this
Company X puts up a bond (say, $10,000)
Then the Bonded Sender service adds this company to their publicly queriable database

Later, Company X sends you email
Your email server checks the database and notes that Company X is bonded
All further spam checking is skipped for that email! (yay)

Suppose at some future point Company X actually does send a spam to someone

That someone complains to Bonded Sender.  As a result, Company X loses their bond! (ouch)

Rossj wrote:

As far as I can see the biggest problem you have is trying to charge people for a service that they have essentially had as free (or part of a package) for as long as they have been on the Internet. 

How about I start charging you for visiting websites in order to try and cut down on advertising pop-ups? Doesn't sound so attractive now does it?

Also it involves some participation from end-users and you won't get that, they just want to use email if they have to arse about with all this payment mallarky I don't think they'd bother - you'd probably just increase the growth of IM.

Maurits wrote:

Jeremy W. wrote: Maurits wrote: Because email should continue to be free. Why?

I don't really know.  It's basically a gut feeling.  I've come up with arguments for it but none of them really convince me.
Snail mail is pay-per-envelope, certainly.  But you pay the postal service, not the addressee - and you certainly don't pay whatever the addressee decides is fair.
Consider mailing lists.  They send out to lotsa people, who sign up.  I suppose they could just refuse to let you subscribe a sender-pays email address.
I suppose a top-level domain could be created for these kinds of email addresses to avoid confusion - something like .pay-to-send, for example.  But I wouldn't want to send to anyone with such an email address.

thechris wrote:

this idea will not stop spam at all, it will just charge the unwitting consumers running zombieboxes for it.

realistically, a better idea would be a non-spammers list.  people who can see if they are receiving email from others on the non-spammers list.  but i don't know if this is possible given the current email schema.

manickernel wrote:

SenderID, SPF.... it is the solution. PLEASE!!! Let's move foward.

Beer28 wrote:

thechris wrote: this idea will not stop spam at all, it will just charge the unwitting consumers running zombieboxes for it. realistically, a better idea would be a non-spammers list.  people who can see if they are receiving email from others on the non-spammers list.  but i don't know if this is possible given the current email schema.

http://www.spamcop.net/
http://spamassassin.apache.org/
http://www.spamhaus.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/spamassassin
http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/

open source has you covered my friend.

manickernel wrote:

SenderID, SPF.... it is the solution. PLEASE!!! Let's move foward.

Manip wrote:

As we discussed in that thread, your problems were not caused by the blacklists but instead by your crappy hosting company.

ZippyV wrote:

Q: I'm not a spammer or spam operation... heck I hate spam, but my email is getting bounced by someone using SPEWS, or I can't access a website due to SPEWS based blocking.

A: You maybe part of the rare "inadvertent blocking" that can occur when a spam friendly provider is listed in spews. Your best option is to try and educate your provider or switch to one who is not listed in SPEWS as spam friendly. SPEWS aims to avoid listing any non-spammer or non-spam support areas if possible - we just want to stop spam.

Jeremy W. wrote:

Sorry, I was on my way out the door. I'm not suggesting taking away your freedom. I'm not actually for the idea. I just don't something like email "SHOULD" be free.

You could, for instance, have Email2 where you had to pay "someone" to send it. If you had an Email2 address, you could only receive from Email2 senders. And Email2 senders have to pay "someone".

Also, "free" and "freedom" are two very different things.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Does anyone have other comments on Email2 ?

I think Email2 sucks

Beer28 wrote:

Aside from spam, I'd like to see mime get an overhaul.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Beer28 wrote: shreyasonline wrote: Does anyone have other comments on Email2 ? I think Email2 sucks Thanks for the comments but you have to explain me why it sucks? If you dont answer I will think that you really suck hence you think everything else sucks.

It sucks because you have to pay for it, plus just the pay system suggests a centralized post office, which defeats the purpose of mail exchange and the nature of the internet and free flowing networks.

It would essentially centralize all communication at one nexus which would ultimately be controlled by one or more corporations. NO. I'd rather have spam.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Beer28 wrote: Aside from spam, I'd like to see mime get an overhaul. Explain a bit briefly what you mean to say.

Mime is outdated. There could be a new FREE email protocol that could be tied into chat and so forth. Maybe an xml based protocol. Mime with the related and the boundries is flawed.

Alot of times mime email generated by one client is misinterpreted by another. There should be something better. Also base64 bloats attachments. A unicode based protocol for text(2 bytes wide, no more quoted printable) with a full byterange (255 per char) encoding should be possible. Right now attachments have to be encoded to 0-127 7 bit only for standardization.

What about an xml protocol where attachments are inline so there's no mistake about where they are relative to the document. There are lots of improvements to be made to MIME.

Beer28 wrote:

Also, most MTS's will attempt to reformat the message redirecting to mailboxes with x-original-to and inserting other tags. There needs to be a seperation of the original message from the modifications made by the MTS. Also better support for encoding has to be made.

Anybody on any network can totally read most people's email by packet capture. It's just an old system that has to get with the program.

I'm not talking about a post office or pay regulation, that sucks, that's for the birds. I'm talking about making the free email we have now better and easier for clients to render the same way everywhere.

Beer28 wrote:

there's no way, because the signatures have to be issued and verified by a central body.

You're proposing a system just like the hoardish and fiendish authenticode system, where people who want to make embedded  IE components with OLE have to dish out hundreds of dollars for a certificate.

CAuthorites are nothing but extensions of MS, in their money making scheme, I believe an email 2 would act in the same way. As an arm of the corporations to suck more money out of you than they already do.

Beer28 wrote:

manickernel wrote: SenderID, SPF.... it is the solution. PLEASE!!! Let's move foward.

I agree, but I think spamassassin and spamcop are good solutions as well.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Also, imagine you will be receiving emails, so you will also receive some money with it. Now, you can re-use the money in your a/c to send emails to others. You dont have to re-invest millions of dollars in order to keep mailling others.

This seems to me like the email version of xbox live. I hope you're wrong, that it never takes root. I'd much rather see a bettering of the current RFC's for email.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: The SIGNATURE i am talking about is not the signature used at present. I have re invented a method to generate a signature which is protected by a password of the beholder. This signature can only be verified by the email server where a copy of HASHED password is saved in a database. Its a different algorithm, completely. No need for a central authority. This system is autonomous till the extent of accepting/delivering an paid email. The only thing centralised is the payment system. The bank you have parked your money is also centralized. This e-bank functions only to verify and clear e-cheques and facilitate funds transfer between two individual banks (intebank settlement).

so when it gets the email it has to reconnect to the MTS that originally sent the message to verify the signature hash?

What would stop a spammer from sending email? There is no central authority to check the validity of the certificates?

And if the receiving MTS has to reconnect to the original sender server, why not just have direct TCP connections between sender and receiver in the first place so it doesn't have to reconnect? What is the purpose of the verification hash? Is this because when it reconnects to the sending MTS, it uses the host name, to verify against spoofing?

That will not stop spammers sending from their own ip's

The signature would have to be directly related to the corporation making the monetary transations and verified against a central body or else somebody could create unlimited certificates

Beer28 wrote:

If you are using hostname verification against the DNS registry as a method of authentification here, it will not stop 75% of spam.

That is connecting to the MX record holder IP for that address or domain then requesting the signature hash, which is how I understood your proposal.

Technitium Port Tester v1.6.2

TIME: Monday, November 08, 2004 02:26:09

==========

WINDOW 1 -

==========

Protocol: TCP / IP

Local Host: shreyasonline

Local IP: 10.64.2.240

Local Port: 1424

Remote Host: shreyasonline

Remote IP: 10.64.2.240

Remote Port: 25

shreyasonline (10.64.2.240:25) > 220 mail (X) change v2.1 ESMTP Server

shreyasonline (10.64.2.240:1424) > EHLO mail.technitium.com

shreyasonline (10.64.2.240:25) > 250-mail (X) change welcomes you

250-SIGNATURE=MD5,SHA1

250-PIPELINING

250-AUTH=LOGIN

250-VRFY

250-EXPN

250-HELP

250-SIZE 1572864

250 8BITMIME

shreyasonline (10.64.2.240:1424) > QUIT

shreyasonline (10.64.2.240:25) > 221 mail (X) change v2.1 ESMTP Server closing transmission channel...

Beer28 wrote:

What if the spam sender is using their own domain from China or some other country as is often times the case? They'll be able to authenticate their own emails just fine.

So ultimately the real verification is made through the institution making the payment transactions and that controls the system?

2 words

xbox live

1 more word

no.

Beer28 wrote:

So ultimately the real verification is made through the institution making the payment transactions and that controls the system?

2 words

xbox live

1 more word

no.

Beer28 wrote:

I know how a bank works, sorry for the delay, I was off living life.
A DNS MX lookup and network callback to the sending MTS for a hash will not stop spam.
Any bank transaction must be verified against an ID for whatever email is paid for. This is your real authentification here, whole DNS traceback with the hash is decoration.

This type of system will require a centralized payment authority, or payment authorities with central access to the email ID's, like a tracking # on a UPS package. To tell the recipeint whether a payment has been made or not, and whether to allow the email to be delivered.

This system is pay to play. Pay to play may have flown as far as gaming is concerned, though not with me anymore, but I hope it doesn't with email.

This is essentially a tax on email. A non-government sanctioned tax. No payment authorities are going to allow all these transactions to take place for free. And there will be a wizard of oz collecting on every email transaction in your system.

If something like this came about, I would make every effort to help OSS projects find a more attractive solution.

Beer28 wrote:

If it's an instant stamp PO type system or if it's a system like described on this thread, you can't exactly cache daily results like blacklists. You have to update in real time and fetch on demand. That's going to hammer the bandwidth.

Beer28 wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: What you think about having two emails systems, the existing one (which will remain FREE) and a new system which will be paid. The Payed system will be used for really important things like corporate email, banking, online shopping etc. Tell us all your opinion....

I restate, I think it's a waste of development time. Hate me if you must.

Beer28 wrote:

Maurits wrote: Is it just me or is Sender ID *way* too complicated?  It could probably be replaced by the following procedure: Consider an email server receiving-server.example.com It is connected to from another server whose IP is 10.2.3.4 receiving-server.example.com does a reverse DNS lookup on 10.2.3.4 and gets sending-server.example.net as a result If the reverse lookup fails, REFUSE THE CONNECTION! receiving-server.example.com then does a forward lookup on sending-server.example.net and gets the following result: A 10.2.3.4 A 10.2.3.5 If the forward lookup fails, REFUSE THE CONNECTION! If the forward lookup succeeds, but does not contain the actual connecting IP as an answer record, REFUSE THE CONNECTION! sending-server.example.net then attempts to EHLO as ehlo.example.org receiving-server.example.com does a DNS lookup for _ehlo.spf.example.org If this succeeds, and contains an SPF-like TXT record, and the connection doesn't match - REFUSE THE CONNECTION! sending-server.example.net then attempts to send MAIL FROM from@example.info receiving-server.example.com then does a DNS lookup for _mail-from.spf.example.info If this succeeds, and contains an SPF-like TXT record, and the connection doesn't match - REFUSE THE CONNECTION! receiving-server.example.com then logs all these DNS results in the message header. joe@example.com finally gets the email, with the added headers. His cool new SPF-aware MUA shows him the email, with the following warning as appropriate: EMAIL CLAIMS TO BE FROM EBAY.COM BUT IS REALLY FROM EXAMPLE.INFO! This allows frequently phished domains to well-protect themselves appropriately, and lazy domains to be somewhat-protected by virtue of the DNS system.

What about MTS forwards and resends?

Jeremy W. wrote:

Manip wrote: It is the equivalent to charging someone for going down to the beach and drinking out the sea.

Which does happen. Private beaches are fairly common in the UK

Cronan wrote:

A quick Google will give you a better idea of what has been tried, what is proposed, and the pros and cons of all options.

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1763
http://securityfocus.com/infocus/1766

All anti-spam solutions seem to fall into four categories: filters, reverse lookups, challenges, and cryptography. All have problems. From the links:

"..Spam filters, while being viable options for identifying spam, do not prevent spam and require constant maintenance. Reverse-lookup systems attempt to identify forged senders but restrict email's usability by preventing host-less and vanity domains, and restricting mobile users' abilities to send email from anywhere at anytime. ...Challenge-response systems are only viable as long as they maintain a low profile, and computational challenges are unlikely to deter spammers. Cryptographic solutions, while accurately identifying forged email, do not easily expand to a global scale"

It's nice that you're thinking of ways to stop spam, but a little research goes a long way ...

reinux wrote:

Sorry, if I'm beating a dead horse or missing anything crucial, but I think Bill's proposition was that time = money, and so a challenge proving that the sender is meat and bones human would work

reinux wrote:

I don't know why he doesn't consider the fact that people might not like the idea of the world's richest man using a word like "money", but that's what he meant.

One time I sent an email, I got an immediate reply with a link to a website, which asked me to answer a challenge. I did, and I got added to their white list, and my e-mail got sent.

The initial responding is a bit of a pain, but otherwise, I think this is a good solution. Unlike Bill's idea which requires massive change (which obviously and sadly noone would support, coming from Microsoft), this idea works on an individual basis.

reinux wrote:

By the way, where on your site is the info on SPF?

..::< DNS HEADER INFORMATION >::..................................................................................

ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Query(0)/Response(1) QR . . . 0
Opcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
Authoritative Answer . . . . . . . .False
Data Truncated . . . . . . . . . . . False
Recursion Desired . . . . . . . . . True
Recursion Available . . . . . . . . True
Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
RCODE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
Question Section . . . . . . . . . . 1
Answer Records Section . . . . 4
Authority Records Section . . . 2
Additional Records Section . . 0
Total Records . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

..::< QUESTION SECTION >::.................................................................................................

QUESTION # 1
     Name      : technitium.com
     Type       : 16
     Class       : 1



and you will receive a response like below



Technitium Port Tester DNS Resolver v1.6.2
TIME: Tuesday, November 30, 2004   15:58:14

..::< DNS HEADER INFORMATION >::..................................................................................

ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Query(0)/Response(1) QR . . . 1
Opcode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
Authoritative Answer . . . . . . . .False
Data Truncated . . . . . . . . . . . False
Recursion Desired . . . . . . . . . True
Recursion Available . . . . . . . . True
Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
RCODE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .0
Question Section . . . . . . . . . . 1
Answer Records Section . . . . 4
Authority Records Section . . . 2
Additional Records Section . . 0
Total Records . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

..::< QUESTION SECTION >::.................................................................................................

QUESTION # 1
     Name      : technitium.com
     Type       : 16
     Class       : 1

..::< ANSWER RECORDS SECTION >::.................................................................................

ANSWER # 1
     Name : technitium.com
     Type : 16
     Class : 1
     TTL : 07200
     TYPE : TXT
     TXT-DATA : Warning: e-mail senders IP will be traced. No-Spam will be tollerated. Check our SPF record.

ANSWER # 2
     Name : technitium.com
     Type : 16
     Class : 1
     TTL : 07200
     TYPE : TXT
     TXT-DATA : v=spf1 mx:mail.technitium.com include:fortunenet.co.in -all


The bold text reply is the SPF record of that domain.

qwert231 wrote:

Couple of things off the bat, I'm not fully familiar with SMTP so if I'm missing something, I'm sorry.

An e-mail needs to get sent via TCP-IP packets, which contains an IP address. I believe this is the case, but I may be wrong.

The packet needs to reach the recipient's e-mail server. That server could track IP/e-mail address info, and stop recieving after, let's say 200 e-mails, unless the sender's IP/e-mail is registered, which would be for a fee. You get a few big guys, like AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and Google, and that will trim things down a bit. They can also do the same for people sending from their servers...

That way, only mass senders would be charged. These guys won't make a living if they can only send 200/day, but most of us regular users would.

And that way, people wouldn't need to get new e-mail clients, the protocol doesn't need a major re-write/addition. It would all be handled by the servers.

Companies sending legitimate newsletters, and such, could probably swing a reasonable charge to AOL/Yahoo/MSN... and the big e-mail companies, I'm sure, would love to charge for it.

So, to sum up, I think IP blocking/registration for mass mailers would work.

Loadsgood wrote:

This was Bill Gates' idea. I wonder if he's going to implement it, he probably won't since the critics out there hated the idea. So do I, there are a lot of ripping off people involved in this, probably a crack to make the sender pay more, and just to much risk all up. It would make a lot less people use email,  and over all you would have to attach your money account to your email account (as in have a secret section in your email setup with your bank details, which there probably would be a crack to find out).

Shining Arcanine wrote:

Loadsgood wrote: This was Bill Gates' idea. I wonder if he's going to implement it, he probably won't since the critics out there hated the idea. So do I, there are a lot of ripping off people involved in this, probably a crack to make the sender pay more, and just to much risk all up. It would make a lot less people use email,  and over all you would have to attach your money account to your email account (as in have a secret section in your email setup with your bank details, which there probably would be a crack to find out).

The latest version of this was an electronic postage which one I doubt would scale and two would kill legimate mailing lists. Combining that with the fact that spammers will find a way around it doesn't justify the long term costs. In another thread on this topic a while back I outlined a list of less costly technologies that when combined should almost completely eliminate spam.

thechris wrote:

http://spam.weblogsinc.com/entry/8920483271537815/

in reply to a previous thing, there is dmail, a pay email serivce.  note that dmail is also a unix email server, the two are different.

thechris wrote:

the only issue is that it will not work, a large number of real people will not use it and opt for a free emailish system implemented by IM programs which will contain MORE advertising.  then you will have people that need to send email from free-net to pay-net.

also, a large amount of people use "free" email accounts.  even if the cost is only 1cent per user per year, the companies with a few million users will not want to:
1.)  account for the users, as this is extra paperwork.
2.)  pay the fee.
and the users will not want to:
1.)  pay the fee
2.)  give personal billing info to free email system, as this will allow MORE spam from the "free" email servers.
3.)  pay trivial amounts online.
4.)  re-open the doors for pay as you surf internet (like prodigy did)

useing monetary values seems like a terrible idea becuase:
1.)  massive backlash to paid services.
2.)  you are required to pay, meaning billing is required.
3.)  autopay requires personal info that is fairly sensitive.
4.)  known valid personal info related to an account will allow compaines to actually get your home address, your phone number, and your email, as well as your cookies.  imagine getting phone spam because you read an artical about cars...

I think your anti spam idea will have only negative effects, resulting in just as much email spam (targeted now), as well as increasing credit card fraud (both consumer and buisnesses), and increase phone and mail spam (also targeted).

the advertising budgets for targeted ads is much greater for random ads.

shreyasonline wrote:

thechris wrote: http://spam.weblogsinc.com/entry/8920483271537815/ in reply to a previous thing, there is dmail, a pay email serivce.  note that dmail is also a unix email server, the two are different.

You yourself must read the link you posted, it says:

The concept is simple:  Dmail is a closed system available only to subscribers, who have to log in to get their dmail messages.  Nobody outside the system can send them spam.  Of course, nobody outside the system can send them any email at all.


Clearly, its an isolated system. So nobody can send an e-mail to an dmail user, neither a dmail user can send an email. This is never going to work.

shreyasonline wrote:

One more point on Dmail, they have said that, "nobody outside the system can send them any email at all". They do not deny this case > if I get an Dmail account, I can send SPAM to Dmail users!

Maurits wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: One more point on Dmail, they have said that, "nobody outside the system can send them any email at all". They do not deny this case > if I get an Dmail account, I can send SPAM to Dmail users!

OK, so when you register for Dmail, you pay a varying amount ($10 to $10,000) into your account

The money in your account determines how many emails you can send.  If you need to send more, you can add to your account.
$10 => 50 emails a day
$100 => 5,000 emails a day
$1000 => 500,000 emails a day
$10000 => 50,000,000 emails a day

Note you're not charged anything when you send email.

If someone gets spam from you, they report it to the central server.  The server then pays them 0.50 to compensate them for their time.  The server then docks $1 from your account, and recalculates the amount of emails you can send per day.  The server will also block all further emails from you to the complaining party, so that you won't get docked any more money.

Steve411 wrote:

I don't think anyone will ever love spam. Regardless if they get payed for receiving it or not. Good try though.
 God BLess,
   steve

shreyasonline wrote:

I will answer to his point by point:

1. You don't hve to give any payment information except your e-mail address and your e-bank's check collection site address (this site is a new protocol) to the recipent of the payment. So absolutely no personal information leak takes place in here. (The payer doesnot even require to know the payee's name! He just has to know his email address and his e-bank cheque site address.)

2. You pay only to send unsolicit e-mail (you can send as many free e-mails to your girlfriend, don't worry)

3. ABSOLUTELY NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED. There is absolutely no need to use credit card. Although, you may make payments to your e-bank through credit cards for buying the online international currency which I call "electron". (Credid cards only if customer wishes.)

4. There is no paper work except opening an e-bank account. (its similar like opening an bank account)

5. Yes, there will be rise of stuff like pay-as-you-surf-website. My comment is that this will open a new gateway to get premium information which you can never get free. e.g. a programmer can sell his code/software online without any hassel.

6. This technology is backword compatible. That is, if the sender is sending a solicit email to you, then even if he is using the plain old SMTP protocol, you will receive the e-mail. This is since you had added his email address in a solicit email list of your email account.

Remember, only sending an unsolicit email needs to be paid.

So this is really a helpful technology and has got more advantages than disadvantages.

thechris wrote:

what about the issue of targeted spam?  you don't seem to say anything about the fact that people who have to pay for email will also be inclined to use that email account.

thechris wrote:

  your solution was to charge $10 an email. 

thechris wrote:

this has massive security issues as virii can be made to send unsolicited emails to a known account and then charge $10 per email.

thechris wrote:

i don't see pay as you surf as being good.  given that it has failed in the past, at least in the USA.

thechris wrote:

I really don't think the idea will catch on.  you say it is good becuase it reduces spam.  ok, maybe it will, but i really doubt it will.  it becomes more hassel to get an email address and then there are email fraud issues as well as spite issues (you say somehting bad in an email and i chrage you $10).  spammers will find ways to trick users into adding themselves to the unsolicited lists.  you have to ask if the pros of the design outweigh the cons. 

thechris wrote:

You'll find this needs a definition of what is "good" and "bad".  for me, free is more important then low spam.

thechris wrote:

as a user, I would just not use email.  there goes up a barrier to communication.  You'll find a large resistance to making something a paid service.  I'd probably go ICQ and suggest that everyone else do the same.

thechris wrote:

$1000?  I assure you that no one will use a system where this can happen.

thechris wrote:

example.  I am a crook.  while at your house i send myself email from your account (or a virus automates this, possibly by opening a VNC connection even).  upon returning home i charge you $1000 for sending me an unsolicited email.  who pays the $1000?  you?  your ISP?  email insurance?

thechris wrote:

So this is no different then a currently available and FREE whitelist as NO ONE will send unsolicited email when they can be financially ruined for doing so!  except in this case there are large possibilities for fraud.

thechris wrote:

This is furthermore bad because people might become afraid to use legitamate unsolicited emailing (email for tech support.

thechris wrote:

for work you can use whitelists and internal email servers, which is much better then pay for that given purpose as accounting doesn't get confused with having to set up 500 bank accounts for user email...

thechris wrote:

I'm not sure i follow the backwards compatibility.  if i don't have an ebank account, can i send free unsolicited emails to ebank users?  or is it blacklisted by default?

thechris wrote:

paypal already has banking features.

thechris wrote:

you should look into alternate methods of payment that don't require an ebank account or money.  not sure what they might be, but it seems the ebank and money issue is the biggest flaw in the scheme.

shreyasonline wrote:

Also, many people like me send more than 50 mails per day and paying 10$ for 50 mails is the worlds most expensive mail system. Instead, I will use the old email with SPAM.

Maurits wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Also, many people like me send more than 50 mails per day and paying 10$ for 50 mails is the worlds most expensive mail system. Instead, I will use the old email with SPAM.

You don't pay $10 for 50 mails.  You pay $10 to sign up.  Then you can send 50 emails a day every day for as long as you're a member.
If someone thinks you sent them spam, that costs you $1 and you can only send 45 emails a day until you pay back that $1 into your account.

If you send more than 50 emails a day, you can put $2 into your account to get you up to a 70-email-a-day limit.  Then you can send 70 emails a day every day for as long as you're a member.

shreyasonline wrote:

Consider, you and I both are Dmail members, and you d-mail me an unsolicit (for what so reason it may be). I will click "This Is SPAM" and wham you loose $1. So, I may delibrately click the button and make the sender pay.

shreyasonline wrote:

If I say "This Is SPAM" to an d-mail, the d-mail sender gets blocked for ever for me. Dont you think this is a communication barrier.

manickernel wrote:

Personally I think a shotgun up beside the head blowing thier red brains up against a wall is a good solution. And I would be the first to do it. These guys are scum. Kill them where they sleep. Kill them and all thier spawn.

thechris wrote:

"You can always send an unsolicit e-mail to a user using e-bank e-mail and ask him to return the money you attached."
-but why would i attach money if i am not an ebank user?

thechris wrote:

while the options for alternate payment are limited, they may be possible.  Bill Gates proposed a method based upon CPU time.

thechris wrote:

"
500 accounts would be for a buisness where each of 500 users has an email account.  irregardless of 1 lumped or 500 seperate accounts, it would be extra paperwork.

thechris wrote:

if you might be charged $10,000 for emailing tech support, would you email tech support?

thechris wrote:

The virus would operate at a more insecure area.  for instance using VNC to manually send email via a series of clicks where the mouse is remotely controlled.  realize that many users do not have local email passwords, nor want to enter a password per email or even per time they check email.

thechris wrote:

realistically the bidding concept would be much better, where the sender sends email with a set value of confidence.  Further legislation to protect the sender could be done such that the sender could not be charged for sending non-spam unsolicited emails.  spammers can then send you spam, but likely the amount will be low as spammers probably won't value the email at more then 1 cent, while legit email will value it above $1 as there is no reason not to -- they cannot be charged if it is not spam.

thechris wrote:

 however it has some major shortcomings as well.  it relies on money which is a major downside.  also, disputes may arise over what spam is.  further it may required people to read spam to ensure it is spam in which case the probability of a charge is related to the probability of reading the spam = worth more.

thechris wrote:

i'd say free email is better still.  any other system should NOT be put into wide use, but should be a side system like dmail for the people who really don't want to receive email in the first place.

Maurits wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Consider, you and I both are Dmail members, and you d-mail me an unsolicit (for what so reason it may be). I will click "This Is SPAM" and wham you loose $1. So, I may delibrately click the button and make the sender pay.

Yup.  Not only do I lose $1, you get $0.50.  The "extra" $0.50 goes to DMail to pay for operating costs.  So you're happy, DMail's happy, and I just won't email you again.

shreyasonline wrote: If I say "This Is SPAM" to an d-mail, the d-mail sender gets blocked for ever for me. Dont you think this is a communication barrier.

Yup.  Any future email I try to send you will bounce as "shreyasonline@hypothetical.example.com doesn't want to receive email from you."  This is a feature.

I suppose there could be an "unblock" feature if this became a problem.  DMail would of course keep their $0.50 profit from the original block.

shreyasonline wrote:

Also, my idea would have many more uses than just sending e-mail and reducing spam. If accepted by many people, this may become the most easiest, effective and efficient way of making payments online without any hassels at all. Just imagine purchasing software online just be sending an e-mail without the need of buggy CREDIT CARDS. Just think about it!

Rossj wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: Also, my idea would have many more uses than just sending e-mail and reducing spam. If accepted by many people, this may become the most easiest, effective and efficient way of making payments online without any hassels at all. Just imagine purchasing software online just be sending an e-mail without the need of buggy CREDIT CARDS. Just think about it!

How about writing an RFC?

Dr. Shim wrote:

I don't like your idea much. (I at one time thought it was a good plan, too!)

Dr. Shim wrote:

The main reason being... E-Mail should remain free of cost. That's why it works so well! Same goes for the World Wide Web. You don't need to pay anything, (other than the software and hardware requirements), to create your own Web site. Sure you need to pay a service provider if you choose to rent a server, or use a "shared server" plan. But nothing is stopping you from taking a computer, and using it as a Web server.

Dr. Shim wrote:

This is why everyone in my house-hold has got an e-mail address.

Dr. Shim wrote:

What I believe we really need is to rework the SMTP protocol, or create a new one, which personally identifies the sender of every e-mail. Why not? If it's a letter from your mother, would it matter? If it's the MSDN newsletter, what does Microsoft have to hide? If it's somebody you met online whilst playing a game, and they wish to keep in contact with you, how would that hurt?

Dr. Shim wrote:

If it's a legit letter, I can't see any reason why the sender ought to hide under anomity.

Dr. Shim wrote:

That way, if spam is illegal, just arrest the sucker. If the perpetrator is sending spam from a country which doesn't quite know what spam is, then blocking their entire company ought to be easy.

Dr. Shim wrote:

Unless the whole company is fake, in which case I'm sure the country in question has laws against.

thechris wrote:

i guess it is a good idea so long as it doesn't get widespread use.  if this happens you will have the hassel of maintianing your whitelist (solicited list) and remebering to add people to your list to get email.  I don't think its worth it.

thechris wrote:

it really comes down to a whitelist though.  as you have it, it is too dangerous.  a limit of maybe 10 cents per email needs to be in place.  $1000 is too much.

thechris wrote:

its the equivilent of sending people blank cheques.  further, there is a monetary incentive for people to charge you unjustly, especailly if they can get over $1000!  for safety, the sender needs to determine the cost of sending or the maximum charge must be very low.

thechris wrote:

possibly a better system would be a warning system -- if spam is received, a warning can be sent to the ebank.  upon receiving X number of warnings, the account of the indivual is charged a predetermined amount.  this removes the receiver's incentive to charge the sender, and allows the sender the security of knowing they won't lose a weeks salary because they sent bad news.

thechris wrote:

i still say use whitelists if you think your time is that important.

Beer28 wrote:

I think you should help me and join the team to do MFC for linux(LFC), at least that has a chance at succeeding, so your efforts won't go in vein.

Today I had a long chat with linux a developer, and he was all confused thinking LFC was a wine like runtime that interfaced real MFC apps instead of a new library that was a thin layer over Xlib that mirrored the MFC Class library and methods.

When he found out they can still -l link normal linux libraries and use LFC and that LFC was really just the framework of MFC not a runtime for the real MFC, he was pleased. I think it has a chance at adoption in 2-3 years if it can be realized.

Beer28 wrote:

I don't think your pay email system has a shot in hell. That's just my opinion, and as always I could be very wrong.

thechris wrote:

"I can't see any reason why the sender ought to hide under anomity."
-spam reasons.  also see my posts about targeted spam.  there would be no way to easily do this because not all email is used by indivuals or even people.  some scripts send email to another computer that reads the email and does something.

shreyasonline wrote:

I am working on making a draft for RFC !

Dr. Shim wrote:

thechris wrote: "I can't see any reason why the sender ought to hide under anomity." -spam reasons.  also see my posts about targeted spam.  there would be no way to easily do this because not all email is used by indivuals or even people.  some scripts send email to another computer that reads the email and does something.

Forgot about that. Good point.

Dr. Shim wrote:

shreyasonline wrote: I am working on making a draft for RFC !

Good luck with the draft! You do have some fairly valid arguments, however, although I still am hesitant to agree with you.

How about users which are subscribed to a fee-based e-mail services, like Hotmail offers? They may find the extra fee unnecessary. Or how about ISPs which haven't implemented the new system yet, how would they fair?
I may be asking questions which you already answered, it's a long thread and I haven't read through it entirely.

thechris wrote:

You must include an option to see if you can send solicited mail.  otherwise important things like order confirmations will not make it to you -- after all what buisness will risk losing $1000 because they send out a confirmation before they are on the users whitelist.

i'm still against the setup because it uses monetary values.