One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time

An anonymous reader writes "A recent article in the IBM Systems Journal describes an innovative solution to curb both spam email and telemarketing. In short, the potential recipient of a message/call advertises the potential cost of contacting him uninvited. If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted. The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token. The author also provides for a more detailed description."

Comments

Waste

[Sc00ter]

First off, if it's telemarketing all you have to do is ask to be put on a do not call list. If they call back within a year then they just gave you $500 - See http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/telemarketing/

If they're spammers good luck collecting since most of the time the headers are all forged anyway or they're coming from some asian country.

Not a good idea...

[Azzaron]

You FINALLY found a girl who think enough of you to use the phone number you gave her. She's hot, sweet and intelligent with a great sense of humour.

"You must agree to pay this geek 5 cents a minute while talking to him," a nasally voice greets her after she dials your number.

"FUCK THAT!"

There goes the love of your life...

Re:not a half bad idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

"what the heck would i list as occupation on my income taxes though..."

Spam Whore?

Large problem with this: Unexpected relevant calls

[chuckfirment]

The article talks about using "Interrupt Tokens" that you can give out as a one-use token to interrupt (email spam, telemarketer call) you. If the person contacting you doesn't have an interrupt token, they can't contact you without paying your "Interrupt Fee", the fee that you set for contacting you.

I often get calls that I don't expect, and I need to take them. I can't have people unable to contact me about a business deal because they don't want to pay my "Interrupt Fee". They'll say, "Eh, to heck with it. I'll give the deal to the next guy down the line."

For telemarketers, I use the key phrase, "Place me on your do not call list." I get maybe one telemarketer call every other month, and normally those are recorded messages.

Chuck Firment

Re:Been there, done that

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

I signed up for my state's (Indiana) no-call list. I have since then received 3 e-mails from the state's Attorney General office letting me know about potential federal legislation that could restrict my no-call list rights.

Not 3 different e-mail, the same e-mail sent three times... I got rid of telemarketers just to get more spam...

Simple solution: Require PGP/GPG sig/encryption

[Jens]

I've been doing this for some time. It works like this:

• You have a whitelist of domains and adresses.
• You also have a blacklist of domains and addresses.
• Every mail from a sender in the whitelist is accepted.
• Every PGP/GPG-signed or encrypted mail from a sender NOT in the blacklist is also accepted.
• Everyone else will get a mail back and have to click on an URL (or reply to the confirmation mail) confirming his/her message to me.
• Double bounced addresses land in the blacklist.

Bang, zero spam.

Remember to put your business partners on the whitelist though. ;)

-- Jens

Re:But actually,

[jjo]

It's hardly original with Bill. For example, in Robert Heinlein's 1966 book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", he outlines a similar scheme. In Heinlein's book, he deals with actual visitors at the door, but the basic concepts (pay for interruption, and only collect if the interruption was unwarranted) are the same.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if the idea even predated Heinlein.

Can this work?

[Pedrito]

I just don't see how this could work. There appear to be too many technical issues involved, not least of which is implementation. First of all, you have to assume there will some "e-token standard." Next, you have to assume Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and all the other free-email services will support it. You can do a proxy server on the clients for other mail packages, but anything web-based will have to be adapted to it.

Next you need to somehow distribute the tokens to these different systems. This seems to require some sort of integration between the token provider(s) and the e-mail systems and web-based e-mail services.

I just don't see it happening to fix something that can be handled pretty well through filtering. The fact is, e-mail filtering software is making great headway these days. Baysian filters, collective filters like Cloudmark's SpamNet, and so forth.

One idea I had was for a white-list proxy. The first time someone sent you an e-mail, it would hold it in a queue. It would send them back a message asking them if they're sure they want to deliver the message (99% of spammers won't get past this point). As the recipient, you would would be notified of their intent to e-mail you and then validate whether or not you wanted to allow mail from this new sender in the future.

It has problems as well, but it's infinitely more implementable than the idea this paper proposes.

Been there, done that

[macterra]

I worked for a company Javien that implemented this solution for email last year. The product was called Bouncer and would sit in between your email client and POP3 server. When it received a message from someone that wasn't on your accept list, it would bounce it back with a contract that could optionally include a request for payment. This was hooked into Javien's micropayment system, so if the sender accepted the terms of the contract they could attach a digitally signed proof of payment with the email when they send it again.

Not new at all, first proposed before 1985 ...

[gweihir]

In R.A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Hazel Stone (posing as Gwen something) uses a similar system to protect her messaging system: Spend some money to record an urgent message to her and she decides on whether to pay you back or not.

Give that the book was published in 1985, I would say the idea is pretty old.

roblimo.com

[rmohr02]

If you're wondering how something like this can be implemented, look at the email agreement on http://roblimo.com/

RTFA!!!

[ThinWhiteDuke]

Wow, more than 100 posts already and still 90% of posters obviously did not grasp the (rather) simple concept. I've seen a number of completely irrelevant objections:

The law would never pass : That's one of the best feature in this idea. No need for a new law. The recipient already has the right to block incoming messages. You know, when your phone rings, you won't go to jail if you don't take the call.

Spammers will never accept this : Of course not, but nobody asks them! Using this kind of solution is YOUR decision; you don't have to ask anybody's permission, especially spammers.

Widespread adoption will never occur : So what? This system will work for me even if I'm the only user. It's not one of those things that require a critical mass of users to be useful.

This will not completely eradicate spam : Frankly, I don't care. If it prevents spam sent to me, it's good enough.

5 cents to read spam is not worth it : You're missing the point. This is not about making money, it's about discouraging spammers. No spammer will ever send you an email if it costs him 5 cents. And the price is not for making you actually read the spam, it's only for allowing it to reach your inbox. In the very unlikely case a spammer actually pays, just delete the message as usual.

So please, read the article. The idea may not be completely new (email stamp) but the details address most obvious objections.

One problem I can think of is still pending : what happens if the sender is also equiped with a similar system? Will we see payment notices bouncing back and forth between both ends without ever reaching an inbox? I guess a solution would be to automatically whitelist any address you've sent an email to, if only for 1 hour.