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Journal asv108's Journal: Authenticated E-mail is a Pipe Dream 3

Journal by asv108
Since my purchase of a Tivo last year, Tech TV has become watchable. The network is pretty much a joke as whole, but the Screen Savers is bearable with 30 sencond skip enabled.

For the last few weeks, every time a Spam story is covered, the show's main host, Leo Laporte goes off on a big rant about how "authenticated e-mail is going to fix everything." I can't believe the nativity of someone who at least in a general sense knows a decent amount about technology. His belief is basically that if a few commercial isps team up in the US and require "authenticated e-mail," the whole world will switch from the current e-mail system and spam will end. Here a few a comments:

  • Authenticated e-mail will never happen without backwards compatibility to the old system, which will keep people spamming.
  • The concept of authenticated e-mail has been around forever, but its nearly impossible to implement.
  • No ISP in the world, even if the big ones teamed up, would start blocking unauthenticated e-mail. Remember, an ISP relies on customers :)
  • There will always be anonymous remailing systems, even in an authenticated e-mail environment. There is really nothing you do to prevent this assuming you would have the same feature set of the existing mail system.
  • What about privacy and anonymity in an authenticated e-mail environment?

Authenticated e-mail is just not going to happen anytime soon.. Anyone disagree?

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Authenticated E-mail is a Pipe Dream More

Authenticated E-mail is a Pipe Dream

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  • Blocking unauthenticated email may not ever be very practical, but whitelisting authenticated mail (and giving it other forms of preferential treatment, such as moving it to the head of delivery queues) sure is. Authentication is just another filtering tool. But it's a good one.

    What about privacy and anonymity in an authenticated e-mail environment?

    Separate issues. If we have a PGP signed and encrypted conversation, then there's plenty of privacy but no anonymity. I value privacy, but am not worried

  • The notion of authenticated e-mail requires the accompanying notion of trust. Do you trust the software? I write software for a living, and I don't. If something can be generated legitimately, it can likely also be spoofed. So, do you trust a digital signature? Depends on who did the signing. Then do you trust some kind of key-issuing authority? Or do you have some kind of distributed trust network?

    It'd be great it if I could bounce unauthenticated e-mail. "Either authenticate your e-mail or sen

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