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I was trying to solve secure email at a mass scale, and the fundamental problems there were 1) key management and 2) spam. We had a good solution for key manag
by SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I was trying to solve secure email at a mass scale, and the fundamental problems there were 1) key management and 2) spam.
We had a good solution for key management, but there was no way we felt we could give a way for scammers to appear more legit (hey, it came encrypted) without tools to fight it. The only way we would have had to solve it was either breaking security or through solid identity management, but that doesn't really (and probably cannot) exist across the Internet and is not necessarily what people are looking for in secure email.
That was when I discovered homomorphic encryption. It really would have been the solution to our problems (that, and how do I search my existing messages). Too bad we were 10 years early (or too poor to put the researchers to work for us :).
- dllthomas 14y agoThe other way to prevent spam is to hit 'em in the economics. If you require the sender put $1 in escrow, which the recipient can claim if it's spam (or, generally, not worth their time - but that'd be socially mediated), then you have changed things substantially.
- dchest 14y agoObligatory http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
- dllthomas 14y agoRe-reading my post, it sounds more "oh, it's simple" than I'd intended. I was just saying that there are potential approaches to cutting out spam other than filtering based on message content (which would be difficult-to-impossible in the case of encrypted email even with a good homomorphic encryption algorithm), and depending on exactly what the parent poster was trying to do they may (conceivably) be viable.
- Nimi 14y agoThere are also proof-of-work solutions (as in, CPU time) along those lines. An analysis of that solution came to the conclusion it won't work as a standalone cure-all, but might be part of a more sophisticated overall scheme. (contact me for pointers if you're interested)
- dllthomas 14y agoThe problem with proof of work is that botnets have amongst the most work available.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- X-Istence 14y agoWhat was the solution to key management? Just wondering what it looks like since the CA system doesn't work, and the GPG approach of key servers is too difficult for the laymen! As for the spam issue, I am not sure that will ever get solved.