Earthlink Deploying Challenge-Response Anti-Spam System

deliasee writes "The Washington Post reports that Earthlink is preparing to offer new spam filter technology that requires sender authentication. AOL is still concerned that such technologies will put too much burden on consumers." The day after it's deployed, every legitimate mailing list on the planet will get challenges from all the Earthlink subscribers...

Comments

why challenge-response won't work

[X_Bones]

What if I'm registering at eBay or PayPal or some other site which sends an automatically-generated email when I complete the first step? What if I subscribe to a mailing list where I can't get a response from a human to a challenge? What if I'm applying for a job online and the company sends me an email saying they've received my resume, which I will not be able to see?
I think this kind of scheme is only useful when the message sender is human and you know who they are, in which case the system is pointless anyway. What I think we need is to phase in a new, secure version of SMTP where emails aren't relayed unless the sender's ID can be verified.

How to fix it

[JorenDahn]

What they need is a new mail protocol. One that would probably be much the same, but carry with it some basic, enforcable restrictions. Like all advertisements, solicited or not, are labeled as such. And all unrequested ads have to be labeled as such. Thus, the E-Mail programs can identify them and place them in different Inbox folders appropriately.

Of course, people are going to want to mark messages as non-ads, which is why it needs to be enforcable. It would be a standard that a country would have to agree to uphold in order for access to that system to be available, so that when spammers break the rules, regardless of where they are, they get in trouble. Also a great help would be if all E-Mails in this system had more definite information about their origins, meaning headers can't be forged. How this would happen, I don't know. Maybe it's a myth like "unbreakable encryption".

Can anyone else think of ideas along these lines? Or has E-Mail simply outlived it's usefulness? Should we all just resort to Instant Messaging and forums?