Jupiter Forecasts 50% Increase In Spam

Mr. Sketch writes "According to Yahoo, the amount of spam is expected to increase 50% in the next five years, meaning the average american will get over 3600 of them a year. The future of email is??"

Comments

why Will should be lacking.

[twitter]

The long term solution must be the introduction of a trust network. The technology to make to possible is readily available in public key cryptography, what is lacking is the WILL. A system like this need not compromise anonymity, there are cryptographic protocols that allow for the establishment of anonymous trust with virtual identities. These same system can also be used to ensure email is cryptographically secure.

There's a difference between real spam and the shower of BS you typically see in your mailbox. Real spam is designed to actually sell something, and therefore has a real contact. The BS shower is designed to destroy email and a large portion of it has no real contact, product or anything.

Think about who would want to destroy email as a communications media and why they would spend money to do this. Comercial entities are despirarately trying to make the internet just like other media. They are working to erect barriers for entry so they can continue to sell their obsolete "services" the same way they always have, but with lower costs.

Your trust network that would "legitimise" comerical/bulk email from a bank, reeks of capitulation all around. My email box woould end up looking like my real mail box where the one or two pieces of real mail I get are easily lost in a sea of credit card offers and crap. New entrants, bannned to low bandwith and low trust server ghettos, have to compete with unfair disadvantages. You understand, of course, that your trust network would soon be extended to web and other services, don't you? You also understand that "anonymous trust with virtual identities" is an oxymoron. Either your system makes it so I don't "trust" someone, or it does not. So I get screwed and business returns to normal afrer a few high profile arrests and the infrastructure of the web is changed forever.

Rather than "legitimise" the transformance of a media that should remain pull into push, let's just outlaw spam and punish those who would destroy email. You can, and people have traced down the "spammers" before. Fines, big fines and jail time, for those caught, double when the "product" is not real.