5 ms·

Spam is not Email's fault, but the mere result of its success/importance, which has only been possible due to its interoperability, which in turn facilitates sp

Spam is not Email's fault, but the mere result of its success/importance, which has only been possible due to its interoperability, which in turn facilitates spam. It would be the same if we had all been using - say- XMPP for the last 20 years.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Spam is totally email’s fault. They should have had disposable email addresses built into the protocol so they would be easy to support. Then when an address starts getting spam, run the spam filter more aggressively on emails to that address or block it entirely. Or they should have included PoW so it takes a little bit of CPU time to send an email (wouldn’t do anything about botnets, but not every spammer has a botnet handy.) I can’t think of any other ideas off the top of my head, but it’s absolutely true that there are ways that email could have been designed to be less of a problem
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  I mean, with the networks and processing speed of computers back when email was standardized, sending the email itself would be proof of work, no?
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Less email as proof of work than having a known network address (this was when the hosts file was distributed manually, and bang paths were common) was proof of trust. There were from a few dozens to a few hundreds of hosts on the entire network at this time. Most were educational institutions, meaning a campus sysadmin could run herd over users (if students) or refer to deans / departments (faculty). This from the 1970s through the early 1990s, at which point things began evolving rapidly. Transacting email itself wasn't all that expensive, though for many sites it was batched via uucp or similar mechanisms.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Getting a PhD would have been the work required to get an email address so yes! Then eternal 09/ happened.
  - derefr 4y ago
    Proof of Stake as an accepted delegator to a university/government SMTP validator node.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  Ultimately e-mail is a relic of a time when there was some level of trust (however small) among Internet users. It's always going to be a bit of an awkward fit to today's Internet where you can trust that any and every exposed service will face some attempt at abuse.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Isn’t it just how you handle mailboxes. Let fred@domain.com accept and receive email at any fred+X@domain.com address with ability to block any specific address getting spam. If the friends and family address gets spam, offer a way to create and distribute a new address. For business it is tricker as you want anyone to email you. Here regular antispam measure are probably best.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  DKIM, SPF, DMARC... old tech and it just got reactivated recently. Will take a time to spread. On the other hand people might want to keep pseudonymous and throwaway mails. Nearly the exact same warnings apply here as they would have applied to those that chose Google as a mail provider and now complain about lacking support and account closure. A largely self-inflicted problem. Don't continue this naivete... Spam is annoying, but not a threat. Phishing is to a large degree. That needs user training, people stopping to pay ransoms and sensible IT policies for corporations.
jrumbut 4y ago
I suppose I agree for the narrower claim that a protocol which allows anyone to message anyone is going to inevitably have spam. That said I can count on my fingers and toes the number of spam messages (via hijacked accounts) that have reached my Facebook Messenger/Instagram inboxes and have received zero spam in several years on Snapchat. Walled gardens have many downsides, but there are upsides as well.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  You don't get spam on Snapchat? I think you might define it differently than I do. Since those walled gardens have a verification step before allowing sending messages, spam on those platforms consists of "friend requests" from unknown people. If one is foolish enough to accept one of those, the more traditional spam message soon follows. So yes, most walled gardens' two-step approach makes the spam more civilized, but they don't eliminate it.
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    Not a single one! I suppose I occasionally see friend requests from unknown users, but they don't actually convey a message or achieve any possible advertising goal. That said, I only communicate with a couple dozen close friends on snapchat so perhaps a more active user will get spam.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Whether spam is or isn't email's fault, or a consequence of its architectural naivete, is arguable. What's not arguable is that spam is email's problem. What responses to my quite off-the-cuff though apparently resonating comment has (mostly) failed to recognise though is that spam is a problem not only for email users but across the spectrum for operators, administrators, senders, application designers, and a whole host of others. The fact, volume, and consequences of spam have a tremendous set of knock-on effects which are hard to express with any degree of coherence and sufficiency.
- gernb 4y ago
  I get spam on Whatsapp, and FB Messenger. Not as much as email but I'm assuming because email is where the spammers are concentrating. Which system gets it right and could email be fixed?
  - mcv 4y ago
    Really? I've never had spam on Whatsapp. I was just about to mention it as an example of a very successful service that didn't suffer from spam.
    - Anthony-G 4y ago
      Interesting. It goes to show how varied people’s experience can be. I get zero spam on my seven year old Postfix server as long as I have greylisting enabled (my only anti-spam measure) while I get the occasional spam message on Whatsapp (that I only use for work purposes on my work phone since 2020).
    - Terretta 4y ago
      I don’t use WhatsApp. I don’t have contacts on WhatsApp. I only registered a username to hold it. I only get spam on it.
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        WhatsApp doesn't have usernames?

ChadNauseam 4y ago

Spam is totally email’s fault. They should have had disposable email addresses built into the protocol so they would be easy to support. Then when an address starts getting spam, run the spam filter more aggressively on emails to that address or block it entirely. Or they should have included PoW so it takes a little bit of CPU time to send an email (wouldn’t do anything about botnets, but not every spammer has a botnet handy.) I can’t think of any other ideas off the top of my head, but it’s absolutely true that there are ways that email could have been designed to be less of a problem

shadowofneptune 4y ago
I mean, with the networks and processing speed of computers back when email was standardized, sending the email itself would be proof of work, no?
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Less email as proof of work than having a known network address (this was when the hosts file was distributed manually, and bang paths were common) was proof of trust. There were from a few dozens to a few hundreds of hosts on the entire network at this time. Most were educational institutions, meaning a campus sysadmin could run herd over users (if students) or refer to deans / departments (faculty). This from the 1970s through the early 1990s, at which point things began evolving rapidly. Transacting email itself wasn't all that expensive, though for many sites it was batched via uucp or similar mechanisms.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Getting a PhD would have been the work required to get an email address so yes! Then eternal 09/ happened.
- derefr 4y ago
  Proof of Stake as an accepted delegator to a university/government SMTP validator node.
jrumbut 4y ago
Ultimately e-mail is a relic of a time when there was some level of trust (however small) among Internet users. It's always going to be a bit of an awkward fit to today's Internet where you can trust that any and every exposed service will face some attempt at abuse.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Isn’t it just how you handle mailboxes. Let fred@domain.com accept and receive email at any fred+X@domain.com address with ability to block any specific address getting spam. If the friends and family address gets spam, offer a way to create and distribute a new address. For business it is tricker as you want anyone to email you. Here regular antispam measure are probably best.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
DKIM, SPF, DMARC... old tech and it just got reactivated recently. Will take a time to spread. On the other hand people might want to keep pseudonymous and throwaway mails. Nearly the exact same warnings apply here as they would have applied to those that chose Google as a mail provider and now complain about lacking support and account closure. A largely self-inflicted problem. Don't continue this naivete... Spam is annoying, but not a threat. Phishing is to a large degree. That needs user training, people stopping to pay ransoms and sensible IT policies for corporations.

jrumbut 4y ago

I suppose I agree for the narrower claim that a protocol which allows anyone to message anyone is going to inevitably have spam. That said I can count on my fingers and toes the number of spam messages (via hijacked accounts) that have reached my Facebook Messenger/Instagram inboxes and have received zero spam in several years on Snapchat. Walled gardens have many downsides, but there are upsides as well.

pwinnski 4y ago
You don't get spam on Snapchat? I think you might define it differently than I do. Since those walled gardens have a verification step before allowing sending messages, spam on those platforms consists of "friend requests" from unknown people. If one is foolish enough to accept one of those, the more traditional spam message soon follows. So yes, most walled gardens' two-step approach makes the spam more civilized, but they don't eliminate it.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  Not a single one! I suppose I occasionally see friend requests from unknown users, but they don't actually convey a message or achieve any possible advertising goal. That said, I only communicate with a couple dozen close friends on snapchat so perhaps a more active user will get spam.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Whether spam is or isn't email's fault, or a consequence of its architectural naivete, is arguable. What's not arguable is that spam is email's problem. What responses to my quite off-the-cuff though apparently resonating comment has (mostly) failed to recognise though is that spam is a problem not only for email users but across the spectrum for operators, administrators, senders, application designers, and a whole host of others. The fact, volume, and consequences of spam have a tremendous set of knock-on effects which are hard to express with any degree of coherence and sufficiency.

gernb 4y ago
I get spam on Whatsapp, and FB Messenger. Not as much as email but I'm assuming because email is where the spammers are concentrating. Which system gets it right and could email be fixed?
- mcv 4y ago
  Really? I've never had spam on Whatsapp. I was just about to mention it as an example of a very successful service that didn't suffer from spam.
  - Anthony-G 4y ago
    Interesting. It goes to show how varied people’s experience can be. I get zero spam on my seven year old Postfix server as long as I have greylisting enabled (my only anti-spam measure) while I get the occasional spam message on Whatsapp (that I only use for work purposes on my work phone since 2020).
  - Terretta 4y ago
    I don’t use WhatsApp. I don’t have contacts on WhatsApp. I only registered a username to hold it. I only get spam on it.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      WhatsApp doesn't have usernames?