LOAF - Distributed Social Networking Over Email

FamousLongAgo writes "LOAF (List Of All Friends) is an extension to email that lets you send out address book data without compromising your privacy. LOAF appends a hash-like data structure to each outgoing email, and collects similar attachments from the people who write to you. These files can be queried to see if they contain a given email address, but they can't be reverse-engineered to reveal the list of addresses used to construct them. LOAF lets you check whether someone emailing you for the first time is a complete stranger, or appears in the address books of some of your trusted correspondents. And as a decentralized application, LOAF offers an interesting alternative to current social networking sites like Orkut or Friendster."

Comments

just hope your name isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

a766a602 b65cffe7 73bcf258 26b322b3 d01b1a97 2684ef53 3e3b4b7f 53fe3762 24c08e47 e959b2bc 3b519880 b9286568 247d110f 70f5c5e2 b4590ca3 f55f52fe effd4c8f e68de835 329e603c c51e7f02 545410d1 671d108d f5a4000d cf20a439 4949d72c d14fbb03 45cf3a29 5dcda89f 998f8755 2c9a58b1 bdc38483 5e477185 f96e68be bb0025d2 d2b69edf 21724198 f688b41d eb9b4913 fbe696b5 457ab399 21e1d759 1f89de84 57e8613c 6c9e3b24 2879d4d8 783b2d9c a9935ea5 26a729c0 6edfc501 37e69330 be976012 cc5dfe1c 14c4c68b d1db3ecb 24438a59 a09b5db4 35563e0d 8bdf572f 77b53065 cef31f32 dc9dbaa0 4146261e 9994bd5c d0758e3d

(http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdo wd.com/msg02554.html

FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD: LOAF !

[lateralus_1024]

Send this email to your LOAF within 3 minutes or suffer a tragic loss next week!

but, what if..

[Keruo]

you don't have any friends?

Re:Spam blocking uses?

[Bingo Foo]

Correct, And since your List Of All Friends is appended as a hash and not plaintext, no one can "pinch" your LOAF, so to speak.

Re:Limits

[FirstTimeCaller]

You know who hangs out at bars? Drunks. I don't want a social circle of drunks.

That's OK. We don't want you either.

Oh Boy, Longer Emails!

[tarsi210]

Gee...hasn't anyone else noticed what else we get with LOAF? Longer shit on emails!

Unless the application (which it might, I haven't checked) filters the LOAF signature, we'll have a nice influx of three-word emails with 25 lines of crap at the end of each, plus headers, plus the 50-line signature that I flamed you about last week, plus your cutsey signoff, plus the last 14 messages you've quoted in the discussion thread because you were too fucking lazy to edit them off, plus a poorly-rendered ASCII-art picture of Britney Spears showing her hot grits, plus...

Well. You get the picture. I can't wait until I can be on mailing lists that have 95 LOAF signatures at the end of each email because they were running Outlook and it couldn't filter them out.

Any way to stick those babies in a header? At least they can be hidden, then. The bandwidth is just a victim anyway.

Re:Spam filter?

[Soko]

Hmmm... Mail Expurgated Against Tenative List Of All Friends - MEATLOAF!!!

MEATLOAF - the Anti-SPAM!

Yech. Time to go home.

Soko

Re:Limits

[jskiff]

BS in Computer Engineering, UIUC. No masters, I'm applying for phd programs next fall
1580 SAT
34 ACT
National AP Scholar (requires completing 8 full semester equivalent AP tests while in high school, and getting a minimum score of 4/5 on all of them. A 4 is equivalent to an A in a college course)
National Merit Finalist
ACM Member of the Year, UIUC branch. Awarded for my work on the tutoring program
2nd place biology and 5th place computers JETS Illinois State championship
3rd place biology and 5th place computers WYSE Illinois State Championship (they renamed it my second year)


Job outsourced to India: Priceless...