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Microsoft Researching Anti-Spam Technique

Posted by michael on from the penny-for-your-thoughts dept.

Tim C writes "Microsoft's Research group are working on a technique to combat spam. Dubbed the 'Penny Black project', it involves making email senders perform a computation taking around 10 seconds, which their recipients can then check for. This delay would limit bulk emailing speeds to around 8000 a day, meaning that to spam all of those 'fresh, guaranteed 25 million addresses' would take approximately 8.5 years." We've reported on this before.

4 of 660 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Question... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 0, Troll

    by maintaining a monopoly on software.

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  2. Eventually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    The spammers will find a way to automate it. Or, they'd take advantage of an Outlook bug to spam via other messages. An infected client could send out spam with every regular message you send! Perhaps they can just use an MS backdoor that lets any messages from billg@microsoft.com through.

  3. Re:Proposed "Sender do Something" technique. by BasilBrush · · Score: 0, Troll

    RTFA

  4. Boo! Crap! by TerryAtWork · · Score: 0, Troll

    I don't want to wait ten minutes to send an email! Don't inconvenience everybody just because of a handful of criminals!

    There are LOTS better ways to check for this, like for instance, see if the attachment is a Trojan? THAT would be nice and eliminate most of the Spam right there!

    I do NOT consider it a violation of my privacy to not get a virus! I expect no privacy in un-encrypted emails anyway!

    ALSO - might they not notice that something is funny about someone sending 100,000 emails? Hmm?

    All with VIAGRA or PENIS in the title?

    Stopping Spam is EASY if they just get a grip! No need for any stupid protocols at all!

    --
    It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.