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It's missing the one killer feature that would fix the spam problem: approved senders. If you had a "friends" list like Facebook where only people you've appro

by maxk42 12y ago

It's missing the one killer feature that would fix the spam problem: approved senders. If you had a "friends" list like Facebook where only people you've approved may send messages to you, we'd cut down on 90% of spam immediately. Between that and the lack of mandatory encryption this is just another tedious protocol to implement.

LeoPanthera 12y ago
That's not a practical feature in the real world. Sometimes you need email from unapproved senders. Spam filtering is better accomplished before or after delivery, not during.
- maxk42 12y ago
  There's nothing preventing an unapproved sender from requesting contact privileges, but once denied, their messages and further requests would be ignored by default. Each server and user would have their own identity management concerns. Basically someone can send a "friend request" and if approved by a human (the recipient) they may communicate freely from that point.
  - ricardobeat 12y ago
    How is this different from adding an address to your blacklist after the first message?
    - maxk42 12y ago
      They can't deliver their spam message to begin with. You'd need to approve the contact then you could still block them if they spam you. There's still friend-request spam on facebook, but not nearly as much as email because you can just ignore the people you don't know and block people you do know if they begin to spam you.
      - feld 12y ago
        The request for contact would be just as bad as the spam itself...
  - devicenull 12y ago
    How do you deal with validating a sender? That is, how do you ensure that spammer's don't just create tons of fake new senders?
    - maxk42 12y ago
      That's a great topic to have a conversation around. My initial thoughts are that you'd have a blacklist for servers as well as individuals. So if people mistakenly approve senders at around the same rate they mistakenly open spam emails then you'd only get through one time in ten thousand. If your local messaging provider realizes that 9999 out of ten thousand friend requests from a particular domain are denied, then they'd block the entire domain. Since a friend request conveys little to no information beyond the fact that someone wants to communicate, they'd be unable to get their message out effectively. If one in ten thousand spam friend requests gets through by mistake and after the initial spam message one in ten thousand isn't immediately blocked, then the spammers would need to set up ten thousand domains, each sending out ten thousand messages to get through to one schmuck who might fall for it, and then they'd need 9999 new domains since all but one have been blacklisted. It would likely be enough of a deterrent to prevent most spammers from continuing, although there will always be some amount of spam. At least I don't think most people would be likely to accept a friend request from IncreaseYourDickSize6969@nigeriamail.com -- but there may be more effective strategies for handling burner identities. How would you do it?
brongondwana 12y ago
There's heaps of problems to solve in the email world for sure. JMAP isn't trying to solve all of them. It's trying to make one very well defined part - the communication between end-user device and server - a whole lot better.
erohead 12y ago
try sanebox, this helps a lot.

by maxk42 12y ago

LeoPanthera 12y ago

That's not a practical feature in the real world. Sometimes you need email from unapproved senders. Spam filtering is better accomplished before or after delivery, not during.

maxk42 12y ago
There's nothing preventing an unapproved sender from requesting contact privileges, but once denied, their messages and further requests would be ignored by default. Each server and user would have their own identity management concerns. Basically someone can send a "friend request" and if approved by a human (the recipient) they may communicate freely from that point.
- ricardobeat 12y ago
  How is this different from adding an address to your blacklist after the first message?
  - maxk42 12y ago
    They can't deliver their spam message to begin with. You'd need to approve the contact then you could still block them if they spam you. There's still friend-request spam on facebook, but not nearly as much as email because you can just ignore the people you don't know and block people you do know if they begin to spam you.
    - feld 12y ago
      The request for contact would be just as bad as the spam itself...
- devicenull 12y ago
  How do you deal with validating a sender? That is, how do you ensure that spammer's don't just create tons of fake new senders?
  - maxk42 12y ago
    That's a great topic to have a conversation around. My initial thoughts are that you'd have a blacklist for servers as well as individuals. So if people mistakenly approve senders at around the same rate they mistakenly open spam emails then you'd only get through one time in ten thousand. If your local messaging provider realizes that 9999 out of ten thousand friend requests from a particular domain are denied, then they'd block the entire domain. Since a friend request conveys little to no information beyond the fact that someone wants to communicate, they'd be unable to get their message out effectively. If one in ten thousand spam friend requests gets through by mistake and after the initial spam message one in ten thousand isn't immediately blocked, then the spammers would need to set up ten thousand domains, each sending out ten thousand messages to get through to one schmuck who might fall for it, and then they'd need 9999 new domains since all but one have been blacklisted. It would likely be enough of a deterrent to prevent most spammers from continuing, although there will always be some amount of spam. At least I don't think most people would be likely to accept a friend request from IncreaseYourDickSize6969@nigeriamail.com -- but there may be more effective strategies for handling burner identities. How would you do it?

brongondwana 12y ago

There's heaps of problems to solve in the email world for sure. JMAP isn't trying to solve all of them. It's trying to make one very well defined part - the communication between end-user device and server - a whole lot better.

erohead 12y ago

try sanebox, this helps a lot.