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This is precisely the idea behind i-names - sort of OpenIDs, but relying on an external database and not the DNS.

However, the business i-name for google hasn't been even registered yet... So I believe that the chances of i-names widespread adoption are pretty low.

Normal Internet users tend to rely on things that just work for them and find it too troublesome to set up complicated things like i-names (what's perfectly understandable). Unless any global IT corporation or government implements i-names and so forces their clients/citizens to use it, we won't probably see any of those utopian systems like i-names in action...

Any spambot writer worth his salt will review the collected address list and fine tune it to correct the most common human-readable modifications (and there are a finite number that still remain comprehensible to humans). Certain s/NO@SPAM/@/ will be in any reasonable cleanup script, don't you think? Any address with "SPAM" in it is a dead giveaway that it should be corrected, and the spambot writer will delight in impressing his/her boss by spending a day or two coming up with a comprehensive correction algorithm for 80-90% of the cases.

Maybe the above works for you. It doesn't work for me. Nor obfuscating with numeric HTML entities, etc. Can you honestly say you never get any spam with your technique? Perhaps a Javascript email address generation will work for a while, but eventually they'll get clever enough for that too. An image with the email address probably works, but it is a nuisance for the sender.

After an overenthusiastic spam filter blocked an important real email, causing me a great deal of inconvenience, I threw up my hands and now instruct everyone to contact via an i-name, and ignore all email from anyone not on my white list. So far, the i-name thing has worked extremely well, and I've literally had zero spam.

This has been on slashdot before, where it got terribly trashed with all kinds of greed and DRM conspiracy theories (I don't think anyone really understood what it is about), but nonetheless I bit the bullet and signed up for an i-name (yes, I actually plunked down real money, $25, for a 50-year i-name and 2 years of broker service). So far after almost 2 months, I've had zero spam from it (i.e. no spam whatsoever) even though I have it posted publicly. I decided I'm tired of wasting time training spam filters and now pretty much just ignore everything not on my whitelist, to which I add people automatically when they make it through the i-name service. Life is so much simpler, especially after returning from a week's vacation away from email. I know there are some free alternatives but they tend to have annoying, ad-ridden sites unlike the simple, clean i-name service.

DROP TEXT :: Email People

(Sent this a few days ago to my ISP and family members - thought it might be useful to some /.ers or otherwise... Forward At Will )

=Cy

:: E M A I L ::

Do consider Thunderbird

http://www.mozilla.com/products/thunderbird/
http://www.mozilla.com/products/thunderbird/why/

for both yourself and your clients. It's really a wonderful product
and has spam handling built right in. Unlike Outlook(TM) it is open
about where it keeps your email (not hidden and difficult to export)
and is not so susceptible to worms and email nastiness such as scripts
that run without hindrance. Many a spyware app has been installed
further contributing to the spam problem due to people running just
that piece of software. Don't help the spammers. Reclaim your inbox.

It supports Enigmail: ( email envelopes you don't have to lick! )

http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
http://www.moztips.com/index.php?id=87
http://dudu.dyn.2-h.org/nist/gpg-enigmail-howto.ph p

I've attached my public key [ 0xYOUR_FINGERPRINT ]. I prefer to receive
secure mail. I've got nothing to hide, but I don't like using
postcards for all my USPS correspondence either. Regular email is
like using postcards on the internet. Any postal worker along the way
can take a look ( have a look at email "headers" sometime; every hop
you see is a place where your email is stored on a hard drive. )
Please use an envelope when communicating with me. Won't even cost
you a stamp. I value your privacy as much as I hope you value mine.

Privacy tool for Windows: (supports Eudora, Outlook, Clipboard)
http://winpt.sf.net

There's no need to keep my public key a secret. Feel free to give
it away or put it on a telephone pole; write it in the sky if you'd
like. It's available on the web. The more people that have it the
better. Use it to seal your envelopes when sending me mail. I've got
the only other matching key (my private key, opposite the public key
I've given to you) that allows me to unlock the envelope. You can
even lock an envelope so that multiple people can unlock it on their
own, but nobody else can read what you've sent them.

You can also find keys for me here:

http://www.biglumber.com

Please try it out. Be glad to help you get started.

:: W E B ::
If you haven't heard of the Firefox web browser yet

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

download it and check it out. Then look into the Extensions under
tools. Fast, far more secure than IE and extremely standards
compliant. Lots of tricks up it's sleeve in the way of Extensions,
themes, etc. Introducing this to your clients might be worthwhile as
well. The less spam and junk they've got clogging up their machines,
the less you'll pay for bandwidth, etc. Worth a look.

Thunderbird will import from Outlook. They just had a major release.
Even though this is version 1.0 it's not like a "typical" 1.0 release.
In the opensource world projects often start out with very low version
numbers. It's not uncommon to see something like v0.3.22 for very
usable and extremely bug free pieces of software.

Anyway it's really nice - though it doesn't have the calendar and palm
integration. That you'll need to weigh. Mom however doesn't need to
be on outlook....

=====[ http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releas es/ ] =======

Comprehensive Mail Migration from other Mail Clients

Switching to Thunderbird has never been easier since Thunderbird can
now migrate all of your email data including settings, mail folders

The contact page is nice, it requires one to pay $25 to contact you.

People often ask: what is the difference between your technology and Microsoft Passport?

As I like to say, the only thing good about Passport is at least you know their database won't get bought by Microsoft (because they already own it!).

In functionality - such as automatic data sharing, form filling and single sign-on - we share much with Microsoft Passport. (In fact, Passport grew out of Firefly, which is descended from my 1981 thesis on a personalized newspaper - NewsPeek - at what became soon after the M.I.T. Media Lab. I named the systems "NewsPeek" for two reasons: it provided a "peek at the news," and it was a warning that if centralized control over personal profiles existed, the future depicted in George Orwell's 1984 - where the official language was "NewSpeak" - could come true.)

But all that aside, where we differ is where it gets interesting. For one, we are decentralized. There is no single i-broker or data store that you must use. While it is true that there is only one sanctioned global registry for '=' (personal) and '@' (organizational) names, many other forms of community and peer-to-peer i-name registries can exist. It's also important to note that your data is not necessarily stored in any one place. For ease of use reasons you may choose to use a single i-broker to negotiate access to you data, but each item of your profile could conceivably be stored in a different data hosting service. (Note that current service providers that store information about you are acting as a data hosting service already.)

Another point is that, through our architecture and FOSS (free and open source software) availability of our code, we don't lock you in. Rather, you are free to move around between the i-brokers of your choosing - and even to run an i-broker yourself! We (at 2idi) are committed not only to providing you this choice, but also to providing such a compelling suite of services that i-name holders choose to have their i-names hosted at 2idi.

Having signed up long ago with xns.org I was given a freebie i-name this time around.

How's a 2 letter nickname for an i-name sound? If this ever catches on for web single sign on that will save some typing no doubt!

Everyone here's bashing it but I think there's a ton of potential. Good design if you take a look at some of the documentation on http://xns.org/ http://xdi.org/ I wouldn't mind running my own agent to reply to requests.

First Read:
http://xns.org/i-names-explained.html
http://xns.org/xri-and-xdi-explained.html
http://www.xdi.org/

The premise is that you pay for a pseudo-permanent identity in cyberspace.

What else have you got? If you don't have your own domain somewhere, that can often times be taken down by your ISP "just because", what else do you have? Your email address. That's pseudo-permanant, right. Is it 50 years permanant? Maybe.

So you tell everyone your email address for a pseudo-permanant identity - great! .... wait. You've got spam! What if you have to change it?

Will that email address cost you more than $25 over 50 years? 9 times out of 10 people will spend significantly more than that to maintain an email address with any kind of permanancy. And they'll get spammed all the while because the identifier is directly tied to the delivery method. You can't tell someone who you are without giving them a direct line.

XNS is a global public database that people can go to if they want to find you, just like DNS resolves mabu.com into the IP address your server is at. Not a global public database that contains all the juicy bits, just who's got the goods. Can you imagine being tied to the same IP address for the life of your domain name???? We all want to be able to move but nobody wants the trouble of keeping every single contact you've ever had informed of your new location.

This system makes it like this: If you want to find me ask my broker. He'll get in touch with me and make sure I still want to talk with you, then either I'll tell him "sure - let him know where I'm at." OR "Thanks for trying to get in touch with me. I'll call you."

You can give your broker a whitelist. All these people (your brother, parents, some old school friends) - tell them whatever they want to know. An offwhite list (you can keep a list of individuals, any from *@alumni.school.edu, how "connected" they are or based on reputation) - feel free to give these people my email but I don't want them knowing where I live. A blacklist tells your broker never to give out any information to (=these, =people, =and.weird, =relatives, =and.old, =girlfirends) And on and on.

The global part points anybody in the world to the place where the goods are at, just like how the root DNS servers point to the "authoritative" DNS box you run on your own net. You can change things there and when people come looking you feed them whatever you want - YOU STAY IN CONTROL.

The whole broker thing... You choose a broker you can trust. Right now there is only one, 2idi.com. Not to say you couldn't start up your own. Granted you'd have to get people to trust you if you didn't want your service to fall flat on it's face, but you could do it. Maybe run one for your family or business. Thawte could do it. CACert could do it. Your bank could be your broker. Whoever you trust to handle your personal information, THEY would be your broker.

Sending $25 and your credit card and your email address to 2idi.com is not a requirement to use XNS. At this point they're the only game in town so if you want a particular =i.name, it's pretty much a race. They stick for 50 years.

More (from 2idi.com)...
Basic Terms of Use for your I-Name

* Once registered, you can use your community personal i-name as long as you adhere to this agreement and any applicable laws.
* You can keep your i-name for as long as your community maintains a relationship with an i-broker. You can also add other community or global i-names to your account that can act as synonyms for your community i-name.
* The community i-name registry is public. It does NOT contain any of y

I think they mean this: EGS

Valid I-Name formats

I-names are designed to be as simple and human-friendly as possible. Global personal i-names start with an "=" sign followed by a string of characters (no spaces.) You can use letters, digits, dots ("."), and dashes ("-"), but you can't start or end with punctuation. I-names are not case-sensitive, i.e., "a" and "A" are equivalent.

See these special instructions about internationalized (Unicode) i-names.

Examples:

• =Mary
• =Jones
• =Mary.Jones
• =Mary.W.Jones
• =Mary.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Martha.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Jones.Phd
• =Mary.Jones-Smith
• =Mary.Jones.2000
• =Pickles
• =Pickle.Sandwich
• =Foo-Foo

Note that although dots are not required (i.e., you could register "=MarySmith"), the standard practice will be to separate real names with dots, just as it has become with email addresses.

For further information on i-names please visit XDI.ORG or the OASIS XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) home page.

Check out the i-Name initiative at Identity Commons. It's standards-backed by XDI.