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Unspam, Prince's company before Cloudflare, which created Project Honeypot, had a slightly unsavory (to me, at least) business model of lobbying state legislatu

Unspam, Prince's company before Cloudflare, which created Project Honeypot, had a slightly unsavory (to me, at least) business model of lobbying state legislatures to pass laws requiring "no-contact" registries with requirements that were tailored for Unspam. Looks like they succeeded in 2 states and some version of the company exists: https://www.unspam.com https://www.unspam.com Prince gave up on it and got an MBA at Harvard but he's still listed on the company website.

lupire 4y ago
Benjamin Franklin called that "doing well by doing good" when he lobbied for a national postal service.
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  2 second explanation: https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=156 https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=156
- benzible 4y ago
  The whole concept wasn't feasible and had serious privacy issues. Good summary of why it was rejected at the national level here: https://www.govtech.com/security/us-turns-down-do-not-spam.html https://www.govtech.com/security/us-turns-down-do-not-spam.h... > A registry of individual e-mail addresses also suffers from severe security/privacy risks that would likely result in registered addresses receiving more spam because spammers would use such a registry as a directory of valid e-mail addresses. It ultimately would become the National Do Spam List. Furthermore, a registry of domains would have no impact on spam and a third-party forwarding service model could have a devastating impact on the e-mail system. Also, the laws Unspam pushed for were intentionally tailored to make them the only suitable vendor. Leveraging personal connections and paid lobbying to compel taxpayers to fund a counterproductive, privacy-violating and monopolistic service is not what I'd call "doing good" but YMMV.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Why does the do not call registry work, but the do not email wouldn't?
    - stickfigure 4y ago
      What makes you think the do-not-call registry works? I still receive dozens of spam calls per day.
      - googlryas 4y ago
        Weird, I receive 0
thephyber 4y ago
Here is an article from UCSC describing the UnSpam and Project Honey Pot work that grew out of the work of cofounder Lee Holloway (eg al)[1]. Disclosure: I worked there with Lee Holloway, Matthew Prince, and others. [1] https://engineering.ucsc.edu/news/article/1183 https://engineering.ucsc.edu/news/article/1183

lupire 4y ago

Benjamin Franklin called that "doing well by doing good" when he lobbied for a national postal service.

Xeoncross 4y ago
2 second explanation: https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=156 https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=156
benzible 4y ago
The whole concept wasn't feasible and had serious privacy issues. Good summary of why it was rejected at the national level here: https://www.govtech.com/security/us-turns-down-do-not-spam.html https://www.govtech.com/security/us-turns-down-do-not-spam.h... > A registry of individual e-mail addresses also suffers from severe security/privacy risks that would likely result in registered addresses receiving more spam because spammers would use such a registry as a directory of valid e-mail addresses. It ultimately would become the National Do Spam List. Furthermore, a registry of domains would have no impact on spam and a third-party forwarding service model could have a devastating impact on the e-mail system. Also, the laws Unspam pushed for were intentionally tailored to make them the only suitable vendor. Leveraging personal connections and paid lobbying to compel taxpayers to fund a counterproductive, privacy-violating and monopolistic service is not what I'd call "doing good" but YMMV.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Why does the do not call registry work, but the do not email wouldn't?
  - stickfigure 4y ago
    What makes you think the do-not-call registry works? I still receive dozens of spam calls per day.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      Weird, I receive 0

thephyber 4y ago

Here is an article from UCSC describing the UnSpam and Project Honey Pot work that grew out of the work of cofounder Lee Holloway (eg al)[1]. Disclosure: I worked there with Lee Holloway, Matthew Prince, and others. [1] https://engineering.ucsc.edu/news/article/1183 https://engineering.ucsc.edu/news/article/1183