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I run several of the smallest email sending services on the internet. Been doing it for 26 years or so. {rest of your comment ... verbatim!} Email doesn't ne

I run several of the smallest email sending services on the internet. Been doing it for 26 years or so. {rest of your comment ... verbatim!} Email doesn't need fixing or a v2. I've run GroupWise, Exchange, Lotus (various flavours but never peppermint) and others too. For me, for little systems: Dovecot (IMAP) + Exim (MTA) is a golden combo. Email_v1 itself is just complicated enough without being too funky. You bolt on TLS/SSL and the rest. MX records are a simplified form of SRV records (I think MX came first but the point holds) and remove the requirement for gateway load balancers and clustering technologies if you don't want to do all that stuff. Nothing is perfect but email does deliver a lot more significant messages than any other method from before or since its inception.

naasking 2y ago
If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. There's more spam than there is legitimate email traversing the internet. That is a problem worth solving. You could solve it with existing infrastructure to some extent, eg. your email address is actually a cryptographically generated guid rather than something easily guessed or harvested. If you combine that with a background handshake procedure for introductions, so that all of your contacts get their own guid alias mapped to your canonical one, then you can revoke any of those if they get compromised at any time. Spam is effectively solved. This is basically like the web of trust, but for email.
- felsokning 2y ago
  > ...your email address is actually a cryptographically generated guid rather than something easily guessed or harvested. If you combine that with a background handshake procedure for introductions, so that all of your contacts get their own guid alias mapped to your canonical one, then you can revoke any of those if they get compromised at any time... Here, you're kicking the problem further down the road, though, to another known attack vector: Directory Harvest Attack[1]. In this case, though, the directory (presumably) contains the guid mapping (which - by definition - would have to be a different guid than the object) and would have to process parsing these guids against the users. (This already occurs on recipient receive for some SMTP servers [just before BDATA/DATA] via the email address). What would one bad email to an email guid do? Would it force rotation of the guid[s] throughout the entire forest? If so, how would that be communicated externally? How would you communicate it for just the one address, if you just changed the one guid? Would you, instead, have to keep a guid history to check against -- or lose all of the email between possible compromise and the sender's database update? Would you just keep it in the Transport Queue, until manual intervention could check out email between the possible compromise of the guid and new mail would be received for the new guid? That wouldn't scale for large enterprises. Keep in mind that nothing has to be sent for recipient validation to occur. The SMTP Server[s] just respond[s] to the recipient block with the next step -- but the caller doesn't have to complete the SMTP negotiation from this point, they already have validation if the addresses (even these proposed guids) are valid. Tarpitting is somewhat of a viable option, here, but it isn't foolproof. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Harvest_Attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Harvest_Attack
  - naasking 2y ago
    > Here, you're kicking the problem further down the road, though, to another known attack vector: Directory Harvest Attack[1]. Dictionary and brute force attacks don't work against cryptographic ids, so I don't see how this is relevant. > What would one bad email to an email guid do? I assume you mean, what would happen if you received a spam message and had to revoke a guid? First, revocation means the guid is no longer valid and to any incoming message, so it acts as if the guid simply doesn't exist. Second, the idea here is that every entity gets their own guid designating you, so the same guid is not known by more than one entity. This is the purpose of the handshake protocol during introductions. If A and B know each other, B and C know each other, and A and C want an introduction, B triggers the introduction protocol which mints new guids for both A and C that are then exchanged with each other. This can happen transparently without the user seeing what's going on under the hood. Revocation is just a mark as spam button, and introduction is triggered by CC'ing more than one person in your address book (introduction is the trickiest part). So if A gets a spam message from C, you just revoke the guid sent to C and you're done, any message from C now acts as if A's address no longer exists. This doesn't affect any connections to anyone else. If B's guid for A is compromised in some way, you can trigger the introduction protocol again to mint a new guid after the compromise is resolved, then revoke the old one. There is simply no way for spam to gain a real foothold here: they can't guess ids, and if they somehow obtain someone's address book, those addresses are valid only for one or two messages at best, before it gets revoked. The revocation and introduction protocols can happen using the existing protocols in a few different ways, like by exchanging some message types that are not seen by the user. There are definitely some details still to work out but I don't see any real roadblocks. The only real "problem" is that now all email addresses are effectively private, eg. no globally addressable emails, which is not great for business purposes like info@mycompany.com. You could of course keep running the old email system for this.
    - withinboredom 2y ago
      Email can be delayed ... for days, hours, even weeks. What if I set up a dead-man email to you, you revoke the id, then I die? Would you somehow magically receive my email for a revoked id?
- chrisandchris 2y ago
  The first paragraph sounds exactly like paper mail. And yet, we didn't solve it. It just got worse.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    That seems region specific. I don't get paper spam in Australia. I did get some for a week, until I put a "no junk mail" sticker on my box, which is respected here. It's less of an issue of paper mail and more of applicable regulation.
- rakoo 2y ago
  > If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. Spam is not a technical problem, it's a societal problem. As usual the tech reflex is to find a technical solution but it is mistaken, once again. Societal proplems require societal solutions, not more tech. The only thing you will achieve with more tech is more segregation between those who have and those who don't, you'll create more issues than already exist
  - kavok 2y ago
    Email being so cheap and easy is is a significant component of spam, which is a technical problem to a degree. Spam on Signal, text message, voicemail, Discord, etc… is significantly less present for various reasons (cost, complexity, etc…)
    - thebeardisred 2y ago
      :sigh: speaking of getting into the mud pit... The other side of that balance is that capitalism creating artificial incentives for bad behavior is a significant component of spam.
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        But that itself is just a special-case of the principal-agent problem.
    - rakoo 2y ago
      Being cheap and easy is not a problem, quite the contrary. That we as a society make this a good thing for spam is a problem, but I don't want to make the system shittier just because of the bad use of it.
      - kavok 2y ago
        My work email is virtually useless at this point due to the absurd quantities of spam I receive. I think the OP suggestions would actually make email less shitty. Any communication medium that is cheap and easy will be relentlessly abused by spammers.
- ttul 2y ago
  If your email address was a secret known only to your existing contacts then how does someone reach you if they don’t already know you?
  - Maxion 2y ago
    By buying your address from a broker, just like now.
    - naasking 2y ago
      Which address are they buying? Every contact you know has a different guid address for you, and as soon as one of those is used for spam, you can revoke it. What value does such an address have to a broker or spammer? Addresses have value now because they are global, easily guessable and harvestable, and difficult for the user to change. The system I'm describing violates all of those properties, thus devaluing the whole spam enterprise.
  - naasking 2y ago
    I've described the introduction protocol in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402046
    - anamax 2y ago
      That relies on introducers/mutual acquaintances, which isn't enough. Here's an easy problem that it doesn't solve. I'm giving a public talk and want to provide an email address so that people can contact me. How do you [1] let legitimate responses get to me AND [2] block illegitimate responses. (Note - I have no control over the audience.)
      - naasking 2y ago
        Each attendee gets their own guid introduction as usual, just by scanning a QR code or something, just before or after the talk. The same basic introduction protocol works here, the QR code just names a guid address that has constraints on it (time-limited maybe, or that limits introductions by number of attendees). Corner cases like this have solutions, and even if they're a bit more awkward, who cares? 99.9% of people who suffer from spam don't encounter these corner cases. Should a solution solve the biggest part of the problem, or prioritize making the corner cases easy?
- brightball 2y ago
  Spam exists because email can be sent from any domain on the internet by default without requiring any validation. The moment that enforced DMARC with p=reject is mandatory a lot of problems will go away because you will be required to "turn on" email for your domain with SPF and DKIM. In the mean time, every domain that has ever been registered is subject to being used for spam.
  - naasking 2y ago
    That helps, but they will find a way around it. They always find ways around half measures.
- anamax 2y ago
  > If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. Let's start with something easy - [1] define spam. [2] Can spam be identified with a purely mechanical (no humans involved) process? Do you have a definition of "spam" that is substantially different from "mail that I don't want." It's also interesting that you assume that spammers can't generate new identities. (Yes, you seem to think that introductions solves everything, but it doesn't) I ask that because "I don't want" requires mind-reading by the sender.
  - naasking 2y ago
    I don't think you've actually read the details of my proposal because the fact that spammers can generate new identities is irrelevant. Nevertheless, to answer your question, spam is generally understood to be unsolicited email. The fact that computers can't read minds is exactly why they shouldn't try and should instead simply remove the core mechanism that enables spam to begin with: the easy ability to reach you because of guessable and harvestable global identifiers, and the difficulty of changing a compromised address means collecting and reselling addresses has value. Both of these properties are violated in this system. Minting new email guids is a trivial core operation that literally happ all of the time, and addresses cannot be guessed/brute-forced, therefore addresses have almost no value to spammers or brokers.
    - anamax 2y ago
      You're right - I thought that you'd made one fatal error (sender registries) when you'd actually made a different one (introducers). > spam is generally understood to be unsolicited email Not so fast. If spam is universally disliked and should be eradicated, it can't include all unsolicited email. That's because people LIKE some unsolicited email. Unless you can distinguish unsolicited email that someone will like from unsolicited email that they won't like ... FWIW, you come across like the "advertising should be banned" people. (That's another group that confuses the existence of a problem with the existence of a solution that doesn't have any downsides. They fixate on their solution and try to define-away its downsides.) Advertising is a lot like spam. It is product information. If you don't care about the information, it is unwanted, but if you do.... The thing is, there's always someone who cares. FWIW, every time I've physically met someone who claims to be anti-advertising, said someone has happily displayed several pieces of advertising for products that said someone liked. When I point that out, "that's different" or "I don't mean that kind of advertising."
- rpbiwer2 2y ago
  I just want to thank you for your contribution to this thread. I've long thought email should go in a direction similar to what you're describing, and I appreciate the specificity you've provided. I wish I could say I'm surprised by the animosity (and relative lack of substance) in some of the comments you've received, but I guess that's a problem with social media and/or humanity that's unlikely to have a technical solution.

naasking 2y ago

If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. There's more spam than there is legitimate email traversing the internet. That is a problem worth solving. You could solve it with existing infrastructure to some extent, eg. your email address is actually a cryptographically generated guid rather than something easily guessed or harvested. If you combine that with a background handshake procedure for introductions, so that all of your contacts get their own guid alias mapped to your canonical one, then you can revoke any of those if they get compromised at any time. Spam is effectively solved. This is basically like the web of trust, but for email.

felsokning 2y ago
> ...your email address is actually a cryptographically generated guid rather than something easily guessed or harvested. If you combine that with a background handshake procedure for introductions, so that all of your contacts get their own guid alias mapped to your canonical one, then you can revoke any of those if they get compromised at any time... Here, you're kicking the problem further down the road, though, to another known attack vector: Directory Harvest Attack[1]. In this case, though, the directory (presumably) contains the guid mapping (which - by definition - would have to be a different guid than the object) and would have to process parsing these guids against the users. (This already occurs on recipient receive for some SMTP servers [just before BDATA/DATA] via the email address). What would one bad email to an email guid do? Would it force rotation of the guid[s] throughout the entire forest? If so, how would that be communicated externally? How would you communicate it for just the one address, if you just changed the one guid? Would you, instead, have to keep a guid history to check against -- or lose all of the email between possible compromise and the sender's database update? Would you just keep it in the Transport Queue, until manual intervention could check out email between the possible compromise of the guid and new mail would be received for the new guid? That wouldn't scale for large enterprises. Keep in mind that nothing has to be sent for recipient validation to occur. The SMTP Server[s] just respond[s] to the recipient block with the next step -- but the caller doesn't have to complete the SMTP negotiation from this point, they already have validation if the addresses (even these proposed guids) are valid. Tarpitting is somewhat of a viable option, here, but it isn't foolproof. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Harvest_Attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_Harvest_Attack
- naasking 2y ago
  > Here, you're kicking the problem further down the road, though, to another known attack vector: Directory Harvest Attack[1]. Dictionary and brute force attacks don't work against cryptographic ids, so I don't see how this is relevant. > What would one bad email to an email guid do? I assume you mean, what would happen if you received a spam message and had to revoke a guid? First, revocation means the guid is no longer valid and to any incoming message, so it acts as if the guid simply doesn't exist. Second, the idea here is that every entity gets their own guid designating you, so the same guid is not known by more than one entity. This is the purpose of the handshake protocol during introductions. If A and B know each other, B and C know each other, and A and C want an introduction, B triggers the introduction protocol which mints new guids for both A and C that are then exchanged with each other. This can happen transparently without the user seeing what's going on under the hood. Revocation is just a mark as spam button, and introduction is triggered by CC'ing more than one person in your address book (introduction is the trickiest part). So if A gets a spam message from C, you just revoke the guid sent to C and you're done, any message from C now acts as if A's address no longer exists. This doesn't affect any connections to anyone else. If B's guid for A is compromised in some way, you can trigger the introduction protocol again to mint a new guid after the compromise is resolved, then revoke the old one. There is simply no way for spam to gain a real foothold here: they can't guess ids, and if they somehow obtain someone's address book, those addresses are valid only for one or two messages at best, before it gets revoked. The revocation and introduction protocols can happen using the existing protocols in a few different ways, like by exchanging some message types that are not seen by the user. There are definitely some details still to work out but I don't see any real roadblocks. The only real "problem" is that now all email addresses are effectively private, eg. no globally addressable emails, which is not great for business purposes like info@mycompany.com. You could of course keep running the old email system for this.
  - withinboredom 2y ago
    Email can be delayed ... for days, hours, even weeks. What if I set up a dead-man email to you, you revoke the id, then I die? Would you somehow magically receive my email for a revoked id?
chrisandchris 2y ago
The first paragraph sounds exactly like paper mail. And yet, we didn't solve it. It just got worse.
- viraptor 2y ago
  That seems region specific. I don't get paper spam in Australia. I did get some for a week, until I put a "no junk mail" sticker on my box, which is respected here. It's less of an issue of paper mail and more of applicable regulation.
rakoo 2y ago
> If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. Spam is not a technical problem, it's a societal problem. As usual the tech reflex is to find a technical solution but it is mistaken, once again. Societal proplems require societal solutions, not more tech. The only thing you will achieve with more tech is more segregation between those who have and those who don't, you'll create more issues than already exist
- kavok 2y ago
  Email being so cheap and easy is is a significant component of spam, which is a technical problem to a degree. Spam on Signal, text message, voicemail, Discord, etc… is significantly less present for various reasons (cost, complexity, etc…)
  - thebeardisred 2y ago
    :sigh: speaking of getting into the mud pit... The other side of that balance is that capitalism creating artificial incentives for bad behavior is a significant component of spam.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      But that itself is just a special-case of the principal-agent problem.
  - rakoo 2y ago
    Being cheap and easy is not a problem, quite the contrary. That we as a society make this a good thing for spam is a problem, but I don't want to make the system shittier just because of the bad use of it.
    - kavok 2y ago
      My work email is virtually useless at this point due to the absurd quantities of spam I receive. I think the OP suggestions would actually make email less shitty. Any communication medium that is cheap and easy will be relentlessly abused by spammers.
ttul 2y ago
If your email address was a secret known only to your existing contacts then how does someone reach you if they don’t already know you?
- Maxion 2y ago
  By buying your address from a broker, just like now.
  - naasking 2y ago
    Which address are they buying? Every contact you know has a different guid address for you, and as soon as one of those is used for spam, you can revoke it. What value does such an address have to a broker or spammer? Addresses have value now because they are global, easily guessable and harvestable, and difficult for the user to change. The system I'm describing violates all of those properties, thus devaluing the whole spam enterprise.
- naasking 2y ago
  I've described the introduction protocol in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40402046
  - anamax 2y ago
    That relies on introducers/mutual acquaintances, which isn't enough. Here's an easy problem that it doesn't solve. I'm giving a public talk and want to provide an email address so that people can contact me. How do you [1] let legitimate responses get to me AND [2] block illegitimate responses. (Note - I have no control over the audience.)
    - naasking 2y ago
      Each attendee gets their own guid introduction as usual, just by scanning a QR code or something, just before or after the talk. The same basic introduction protocol works here, the QR code just names a guid address that has constraints on it (time-limited maybe, or that limits introductions by number of attendees). Corner cases like this have solutions, and even if they're a bit more awkward, who cares? 99.9% of people who suffer from spam don't encounter these corner cases. Should a solution solve the biggest part of the problem, or prioritize making the corner cases easy?
brightball 2y ago
Spam exists because email can be sent from any domain on the internet by default without requiring any validation. The moment that enforced DMARC with p=reject is mandatory a lot of problems will go away because you will be required to "turn on" email for your domain with SPF and DKIM. In the mean time, every domain that has ever been registered is subject to being used for spam.
- naasking 2y ago
  That helps, but they will find a way around it. They always find ways around half measures.
anamax 2y ago
> If email didn't need fixing, spam wouldn't exist. Let's start with something easy - [1] define spam. [2] Can spam be identified with a purely mechanical (no humans involved) process? Do you have a definition of "spam" that is substantially different from "mail that I don't want." It's also interesting that you assume that spammers can't generate new identities. (Yes, you seem to think that introductions solves everything, but it doesn't) I ask that because "I don't want" requires mind-reading by the sender.
- naasking 2y ago
  I don't think you've actually read the details of my proposal because the fact that spammers can generate new identities is irrelevant. Nevertheless, to answer your question, spam is generally understood to be unsolicited email. The fact that computers can't read minds is exactly why they shouldn't try and should instead simply remove the core mechanism that enables spam to begin with: the easy ability to reach you because of guessable and harvestable global identifiers, and the difficulty of changing a compromised address means collecting and reselling addresses has value. Both of these properties are violated in this system. Minting new email guids is a trivial core operation that literally happ all of the time, and addresses cannot be guessed/brute-forced, therefore addresses have almost no value to spammers or brokers.
  - anamax 2y ago
    You're right - I thought that you'd made one fatal error (sender registries) when you'd actually made a different one (introducers). > spam is generally understood to be unsolicited email Not so fast. If spam is universally disliked and should be eradicated, it can't include all unsolicited email. That's because people LIKE some unsolicited email. Unless you can distinguish unsolicited email that someone will like from unsolicited email that they won't like ... FWIW, you come across like the "advertising should be banned" people. (That's another group that confuses the existence of a problem with the existence of a solution that doesn't have any downsides. They fixate on their solution and try to define-away its downsides.) Advertising is a lot like spam. It is product information. If you don't care about the information, it is unwanted, but if you do.... The thing is, there's always someone who cares. FWIW, every time I've physically met someone who claims to be anti-advertising, said someone has happily displayed several pieces of advertising for products that said someone liked. When I point that out, "that's different" or "I don't mean that kind of advertising."
rpbiwer2 2y ago
I just want to thank you for your contribution to this thread. I've long thought email should go in a direction similar to what you're describing, and I appreciate the specificity you've provided. I wish I could say I'm surprised by the animosity (and relative lack of substance) in some of the comments you've received, but I guess that's a problem with social media and/or humanity that's unlikely to have a technical solution.