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> Email is open, and incredibly valuable because it is open. A model like this threatens to close it Phones were also open. Now no one answers calls from stran

> Email is open, and incredibly valuable because it is open. A model like this threatens to close it Phones were also open. Now no one answers calls from strangers because of the proliferation of spam calls. This is a natural solution to spam and nothing to be enraged about. It is ridiculous but not for you to dictate how other people manage how you contact them.

dddnzzz334 5y ago
That comparison doesn't make any sense. Earn.com was making people go through them in order to contact whoever used its service. It completely killed the open nature of email where if you had someone's email you could be sure the message directly reaches him. It was then his choice if he chose to read your mail or not.
- thrill 5y ago
  Earn wasn't making anyone use their service.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  I'm not sure exactly how earn.com worked, but when I implemented this for my own email, all such emails would go to a "quarantine" folder until the sender responded to the autogenerated email. So yes, the sender's email did get to me. Thankfully, I would be blissfully unaware of it until the sender confirms they're human. The sender needs to do it only once. There's a great chance that if the sender is not willing to go through that hoop, that they are not someone whose email I want to read. This isn't "killing" the open nature of email. As designed, the email was delivered to me. I just added a workflow to it.
  - igetspam 5y ago
    How did you go about doing this? I would live to require verification for email. I assume you had to have a way to manually dip into the quarantine and white list senders or you'd miss Known Good robots (like banks with bad MFA implementations).
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      Fairly simple. I have a folder called "jail" and all emails go there unless in the whitelist. jail is just another folder. I can manually go in and whitelist with a keystroke. Or if they go through the hoops, the system automatically whitelists them and moves the mail to the inbox. OK, in reality my mail is tag based, so I use tags instead of folders. Minor difference. And no, I do not whitelist banks and MFA emails. As I said, it's still a folder. I can go in and read the MFA email without needing to whitelist them.
      - igetspam 5y ago
        I like your style. I use unique emails per service but that only helps me track spammers and leaks.
- p2t2p 5y ago
  > if you had someone's email you could be sure the message directly reaches him You don’t get it. I don’t want your message to directly reach me. I want you to kindly f-off and don’t waste my time with endless offers of shit that I don’t need. You think your message is worth it? Pay me for my time to look at it then. I think it is a great idea. I wish someone did it for phones as well. “p2t2p won’t answer your call as you’re not in the list of approved callers. Press hash sign to make a paid call for a small fee of 1 AUD a minute if you really think your phone call is worth it."
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    We once built a service like that as a joke on a Twilio hackathon. I've solved my robocall problem by enabling Do Not Disturb mode. Only people that call twice with the same phone number within one hour go through. My friends know and if someone else calls and it's urgent they will retry. But it nicely keeps all those robots away, because they usually randomize numbers.
agentdrtran 5y ago
spam calls are also a solution we know the answer to, at least in part, but small carries played the small biz card to buy their corrupt operations some time: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/us-hits-anti-robocall-milestone-but-annoying-calls-wont-stop-any-time-soon/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/us-hits-anti-rob... "The requirement also doesn't yet apply to small phone companies because carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers were given until June 30, 2023 to comply. The FCC is seeking comment on a plan to make that deadline June 30, 2022 instead because "evidence demonstrates that a subset of small voice service providers appear to be originating a high number of calls relative to their subscriber base and are also generating a high and increasing share of illegal robocalls compared to larger providers."
Factorium 5y ago
Australia has mostly solved spam phone calls with a 'Do Not Call' register: https://www.donotcall.gov.au/consumers/register-your-numbers/#:~:text=You%20can%20call%20the%20Do,pm%20(excluding%20national%20holidays) https://www.donotcall.gov.au/consumers/register-your-numbers.... I can see the USA has the same thing: https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ Does it not work?
- technothrasher 5y ago
  Doesn't work at all. Most spam calls are from overseas using throw away voip accounts. Do not call just gets ignored.
  - Factorium 5y ago
    So why not regulate US carriers to block those calls? Or to make it more difficult to obtain the US VOIP number in the first place?
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      Spoofing your caller ID phone number is very easy. I can make my phone appear to be from the White House and call you. There’s no way to block that. I guess it’s a limitation of the SS7 protocol for now.
- d4mi3n 5y ago
  Slightly different issue. In my experience, the problem tends to be from robodialers operating on behalf of scammers or fly-by-night marketing agencies. As the US phone system is currently operated, it's trivial for these kinds of actors to spoof originating phone numbers and hit every valid US phone number in sequence.
- epc 5y ago
  No. It is not a block list. It only applies to US based organizations who decide to honor it. It does nothing to prevent international callers from using (or forging) a US based number to very urgently talk to you about your lapsed car warranty or your Microsoft Windows error.
Dylan16807 5y ago
> This is a natural solution to spam "You'll only pay if you get a response." How does this do anything about spam, then?
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Presumably, the sender pays unless you respond.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    No, they definitely said it right. https://news.earn.com/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-ec1f9687956d https://news.earn.com/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-e... > In this example, Jeff is sending an email to Sarah. He’s not on her contact list, so he gets a bounce. He then chooses to send her a paid message, which he can easily do through her Earn.com profile. If she replies within a week, she gets paid and Jeff gets his reply.
- p2t2p 5y ago
  The recepient configures an auto reply with “No thank you” just keeps receiving money?
teddyh 5y ago
> Phones were also open. Now no one answers calls from strangers because of the proliferation of spam calls. I used to get at least a couple of spam calls each year, but I don’t think I’ve gotten any this past year. I have no filtering or app. Of course, I don’t live in the USA.
rchaud 5y ago
This isn't about solving spam, it's about adding a toll booth to your email as LinkedIn does with its messaging service InMail. I can't remember the last time I saw a spam email manage to get through my Gmail filter at home or my Outlook filter at work.

dddnzzz334 5y ago

That comparison doesn't make any sense. Earn.com was making people go through them in order to contact whoever used its service. It completely killed the open nature of email where if you had someone's email you could be sure the message directly reaches him. It was then his choice if he chose to read your mail or not.

thrill 5y ago
Earn wasn't making anyone use their service.
BeetleB 5y ago
I'm not sure exactly how earn.com worked, but when I implemented this for my own email, all such emails would go to a "quarantine" folder until the sender responded to the autogenerated email. So yes, the sender's email did get to me. Thankfully, I would be blissfully unaware of it until the sender confirms they're human. The sender needs to do it only once. There's a great chance that if the sender is not willing to go through that hoop, that they are not someone whose email I want to read. This isn't "killing" the open nature of email. As designed, the email was delivered to me. I just added a workflow to it.
- igetspam 5y ago
  How did you go about doing this? I would live to require verification for email. I assume you had to have a way to manually dip into the quarantine and white list senders or you'd miss Known Good robots (like banks with bad MFA implementations).
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    Fairly simple. I have a folder called "jail" and all emails go there unless in the whitelist. jail is just another folder. I can manually go in and whitelist with a keystroke. Or if they go through the hoops, the system automatically whitelists them and moves the mail to the inbox. OK, in reality my mail is tag based, so I use tags instead of folders. Minor difference. And no, I do not whitelist banks and MFA emails. As I said, it's still a folder. I can go in and read the MFA email without needing to whitelist them.
    - igetspam 5y ago
      I like your style. I use unique emails per service but that only helps me track spammers and leaks.
p2t2p 5y ago
> if you had someone's email you could be sure the message directly reaches him You don’t get it. I don’t want your message to directly reach me. I want you to kindly f-off and don’t waste my time with endless offers of shit that I don’t need. You think your message is worth it? Pay me for my time to look at it then. I think it is a great idea. I wish someone did it for phones as well. “p2t2p won’t answer your call as you’re not in the list of approved callers. Press hash sign to make a paid call for a small fee of 1 AUD a minute if you really think your phone call is worth it."
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  We once built a service like that as a joke on a Twilio hackathon. I've solved my robocall problem by enabling Do Not Disturb mode. Only people that call twice with the same phone number within one hour go through. My friends know and if someone else calls and it's urgent they will retry. But it nicely keeps all those robots away, because they usually randomize numbers.

agentdrtran 5y ago

spam calls are also a solution we know the answer to, at least in part, but small carries played the small biz card to buy their corrupt operations some time: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/us-hits-anti-robocall-milestone-but-annoying-calls-wont-stop-any-time-soon/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/us-hits-anti-rob... "The requirement also doesn't yet apply to small phone companies because carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers were given until June 30, 2023 to comply. The FCC is seeking comment on a plan to make that deadline June 30, 2022 instead because "evidence demonstrates that a subset of small voice service providers appear to be originating a high number of calls relative to their subscriber base and are also generating a high and increasing share of illegal robocalls compared to larger providers."

Factorium 5y ago

Australia has mostly solved spam phone calls with a 'Do Not Call' register: https://www.donotcall.gov.au/consumers/register-your-numbers/#:~:text=You%20can%20call%20the%20Do,pm%20(excluding%20national%20holidays) https://www.donotcall.gov.au/consumers/register-your-numbers.... I can see the USA has the same thing: https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ Does it not work?

technothrasher 5y ago
Doesn't work at all. Most spam calls are from overseas using throw away voip accounts. Do not call just gets ignored.
- Factorium 5y ago
  So why not regulate US carriers to block those calls? Or to make it more difficult to obtain the US VOIP number in the first place?
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Spoofing your caller ID phone number is very easy. I can make my phone appear to be from the White House and call you. There’s no way to block that. I guess it’s a limitation of the SS7 protocol for now.
d4mi3n 5y ago
Slightly different issue. In my experience, the problem tends to be from robodialers operating on behalf of scammers or fly-by-night marketing agencies. As the US phone system is currently operated, it's trivial for these kinds of actors to spoof originating phone numbers and hit every valid US phone number in sequence.
epc 5y ago
No. It is not a block list. It only applies to US based organizations who decide to honor it. It does nothing to prevent international callers from using (or forging) a US based number to very urgently talk to you about your lapsed car warranty or your Microsoft Windows error.

Dylan16807 5y ago

> This is a natural solution to spam "You'll only pay if you get a response." How does this do anything about spam, then?

jjeaff 5y ago
Presumably, the sender pays unless you respond.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  No, they definitely said it right. https://news.earn.com/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-ec1f9687956d https://news.earn.com/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-e... > In this example, Jeff is sending an email to Sarah. He’s not on her contact list, so he gets a bounce. He then chooses to send her a paid message, which he can easily do through her Earn.com profile. If she replies within a week, she gets paid and Jeff gets his reply.
p2t2p 5y ago
The recepient configures an auto reply with “No thank you” just keeps receiving money?

teddyh 5y ago

> Phones were also open. Now no one answers calls from strangers because of the proliferation of spam calls. I used to get at least a couple of spam calls each year, but I don’t think I’ve gotten any this past year. I have no filtering or app. Of course, I don’t live in the USA.

rchaud 5y ago

This isn't about solving spam, it's about adding a toll booth to your email as LinkedIn does with its messaging service InMail. I can't remember the last time I saw a spam email manage to get through my Gmail filter at home or my Outlook filter at work.