Microsoft's Secret Plan To Stop Spammers and It's Brilliant!

[KRL]

"The general idea is to force the sender of an e-mail to incur some kind of cost," said Cynthia Dwork, a senior researcher based at Microsoft's Silicon Valley facility.

The codename Penny Black is derived from an 1830s stamp used in Britain that reversed the cost of postage to the sender, rather than the original method of charging the letter recipient.

Similarly, an e-mail sender's computer would be required to spend about 10 seconds solving a complex math problem and attaching proof of the effort to a message, Dwork said.

For most users sending anywhere from a few to several dozen e-mails daily, that doesn't amount to too much computation time. Spammers who send millions of messages, however, would have to buy racks of computers.

"The currency in this case is computational," Dwork said.

Making spammers pay is not a new concept -- another similar model being considered is the "challenge-response" scenario whereby an e-mail recipient would require the sender to answer a question in order to accept a message.

[- Jesus Christ -]

Fucking ingenious!

[SleazyDream]

just shoot the 200 or so major spammers out there and no more problem

[Joshua]

All these methods they come up with can and will just end up annoying the rest of the world. I don't care if I only send 2 emails out, I don't want to submit a damn sperm sample for the people to accept the fucking thing.

[Babagirls]

Nice!!!!!

[Brad Xtremepay]

KRL: Can you ICQ me please?

[- Jesus Christ -]

Originally posted by Joshua
All these methods they come up with can and will just end up annoying the rest of the world. I don't care if I only send 2 emails out, I don't want to submit a damn sperm sample for the people to accept the fucking thing.

Dude if your Mail is delayed 10 seconds and the software does the computations in the background who gives a fuck?

It could make mailing lists harder to distribute but all they would have to do is let you accept mail that does not have computation verification on a sender/server basis.

[Titty Fucker]

Her last name is Dwork.


Kinda fitting for a microsoft employee.

[KRL]

Originally posted by SleazyDream
just shoot the 200 or so major spammers out there and no more problem

LOL, that would need to go to the "non tech" guys to write code for.

[TheJimmy]

interesting, it could 'slow' things down for a while...

[Chasing The Dragon]

VerifiedMailer.com

[jacobt]

i don't see how microsoft plans to implement this. it's not in their nature to release something for free - especially when people will pay for it. unless they're willing to give it away so basically every person in the world can use it for free with any e-mail client, not just outlook i don't think this idea really has a future.

a more realistic approach would be actually regulating spam and rewarding the spammers that abide by the rules with access to massive hosts like hotmail and yahoo on a limited basis without filtering.

[BradShaw]

Making spammers pay is not a new concept -- another similar model being considered is the "challenge-response" scenario whereby an e-mail recipient would require the sender to answer a question in order to accept a message.

Works for me.

[Cyborg69]

The gates plan is bs
what he wanted to do is charge say a penny for email.... % of which he will get for trasfering the payment... also say this will be implimented spam will stop next day say but we will still have to pay for that bs and microsoft will get richer and richer...

all his plans are beneficial to microsoft one way or another...

[Joshua]

Originally posted by - Jesus Christ -
Dude if your Mail is delayed 10 seconds and the software does the computations in the background who gives a fuck?

It could make mailing lists harder to distribute but all they would have to do is let you accept mail that does not have computation verification on a sender/server basis.

The delaying thing isn't really what I'm complaining about. It's the "having to answer a question" bull shit.

[Odin88]

I hardly see how it ingenious? Such number or computer verification things have been around for ages, and they could easily be altered to suit email purposes. The only reason it will work in this instance, is because Gates is the one pushing it.

[Ic3m4nZ]

Microsoft might win a battle but they won't win the war.

[sacX]

not a bad idea.

[TweetyBird]

hmmm, might actualy work

[Ash@phpFX]

Originally posted by KRL
"The general idea is to force the sender of an e-mail to incur some kind of cost," said Cynthia Dwork, a senior researcher based at Microsoft's Silicon Valley facility.

The codename Penny Black is derived from an 1830s stamp used in Britain that reversed the cost of postage to the sender, rather than the original method of charging the letter recipient.

Similarly, an e-mail sender's computer would be required to spend about 10 seconds solving a complex math problem and attaching proof of the effort to a message, Dwork said.

For most users sending anywhere from a few to several dozen e-mails daily, that doesn't amount to too much computation time. Spammers who send millions of messages, however, would have to buy racks of computers.

"The currency in this case is computational," Dwork said.

Making spammers pay is not a new concept -- another similar model being considered is the "challenge-response" scenario whereby an e-mail recipient would require the sender to answer a question in order to accept a message.

what a pile of shit. the penny black was issued in 1840

[foolio]

This sounds liek a good idea to me. I hate spam and the dicksnots that send it

[BrentD]

Doubtful this would work, for starters its Microsoft Technology which means it would run on windows pc's and servers. Any spammer with a brain sets a strong linux or freebsd server with qmail which handles millions of emails daily alot stronger then sendmail does and alot faster too. Then the spammer sets up a mailing lsit program which is capable of sending hundreds of email a minute if not a second. Thus not using Microsofts technology to send spam. But....if I read the above right, it might never make it to the windows users pc's because of windows having to read the math hiden in the email to consider it a legit email, so basically put this way, *nix to *nix email spams would not stop. Am I wrong?

[pornoshare]

Its all good in theory, but how do lists send mail with the delay then.

There are thousands of companies with legitimate lists of millions+ of customers. Lots of these newsletters deal with time sensitive information. eg. stock quotes, virus alerts etc that need to be delivered on time.

I would like to know how does Microsoft itself plan on sending its legitimate newsletters to its hundreds of thousands of developers and millions of customers using technology based on this principle.

[TheJimmy]

Originally posted by BrentD
Doubtful this would work, for starters its Microsoft Technology which means it would run on windows pc's and servers. Any spammer with a brain sets a strong linux or freebsd server with qmail which handles millions of emails daily alot stronger then sendmail does and alot faster too. Then the spammer sets up a mailing lsit program which is capable of sending hundreds of email a minute if not a second. Thus not using Microsofts technology to send spam. But....if I read the above right, it might never make it to the windows users pc's because of windows having to read the math hiden in the email to consider it a legit email, so basically put this way, *nix to *nix email spams would not stop. Am I wrong?

actually it's perfect for him to use this model to "SELL" more people to STAY WITH MS products, instead of leaving as many in S. America and Germany have been doing on large municiple levels...


if he can say MS products block all spam and that using *nix desktops or servers ALLOW it, how sweet is that for him???

annnnd, I'm sure he's thought of ACTUALLY charging per email....

the post office and the US gov would love him for it...big brother already loves him....

[mrthumbs]

email has the same specs as the platform it is used on, the internet: you cant nuke it and you cant nuke spam.

It would be easier for microsoft to setup another Internet standard than implementing those facilities.

Individuals will setup challenge and response systems to kill spam
but that will never be a widely accepted and used system because
of the overhead with the potential of losing emails/business leads.

Email spam will be gone in a few years because
people will get sick of using email since instnat messenging
is growing more and more popular ANd is more direct and effective
than email.

Well basicly move to a new default communication platform
and spam will move along ;)

3 years.

[KRL]

Originally posted by pornoshare
Its all good in theory, but how do lists send mail with the delay then.

There are thousands of companies with legitimate lists of millions+ of customers. Lots of these newsletters deal with time sensitive information. eg. stock quotes, virus alerts etc that need to be delivered on time.

I would like to know how does Microsoft itself plan on sending its legitimate newsletters to its hundreds of thousands of developers and millions of customers using technology based on this principle.

You don't see where he's going with it? Legit companies would have to register to clear the filter. And I'm sure BillG / MS would want a fee to clear you.

Fucker likes being the gatekeeper to everything. He's like the ultimate club bouncer with the famous red rope. You want in? You gotta get by me first.

[born4porn]

Originally posted by Cyborg69
The gates plan is bs
what he wanted to do is charge say a penny for email.... % of which he will get for trasfering the payment... also say this will be implimented spam will stop next day say but we will still have to pay for that bs and microsoft will get richer and richer...

all his plans are beneficial to microsoft one way or another...

bingo

[JensMoviePost]

Governments need to make spam a crime in which the guilty serve jail time.

[Mr.Fiction]

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=225117

[TheDoc]

He can't stop spam, the gov can't stop spam and no user can stop spam. Illegal, pay per e-mail and the best filters in the world will never work. The only thing it does is kill the stupid spammers.

The US gov could make it illegal to spam tomorrow, with jail time and I bet I still get 100+ spams every day. How in hell are they going to arrest people in other countries, or when they can't figure out where it is coming from. They only bust stupid people. Even if you quit mailing Americans, it's only a small % of the pie.

Bill Gates, come on.. His software is a joke and can be cracked by 8 year old russians in 15 minutes.

Making a person confirm that they are real only slows the spammer down ONCE. It's easy to write a program to make it click links on a return e-mail before it sends the e-mail back out.



The only way to stop spam, is to not have an e-mail addess that you check. Rules, software, regulations, laws and sure as hell not bill gates, is ever going to stop spam.

[makefuckingmoney]

Stopping spam is easy..

I know everyone here is smarter than Microsoft so I wont go on any further..

but I say Microsoft is right and the rest of you are wrong..

my

[Lane]

i think this might create opportunities for new types of ddos attacks..
it would become a simple trigger to cause a system to spend lots of processing time, which would make them easy to flood..

[Snake Doctor]

Originally posted by jacobt
i don't see how microsoft plans to implement this. it's not in their nature to release something for free - especially when people will pay for it.

Who said it would be free? The major ISP's would pony up the dough to get the system implemented on their networks.
They're the one's who always complain about how much money spam costs them

[Lane]

i kinda like the idea actually

for example this is possible:

Each server keeps an application running.. Every 30 minutes or so, it generates a large random number X and takes about 10 secs to run it through a process to come up with a resulting number Y.. This server is the email Receiever in our case..

Sender connects to the Receiver and transmits the email.. Receiver sends the current number X to the Sender.. Now the Sender needs to run this number through the same process and come up with the number Y and send it to the reciever.. After a specific amount of time, if the number Y is not receieved by the Receiever, the email is discarded..

This costs 10 seconds of processing time to the Receiver every 30 minutes.. But it costs 10 seconds of processing time to the Sender for every single email sent..

[Giorgio_Xo]

Won't massive Linux clusters bypass this?

[Shoehorn!]

That is a pretty good idea. But I guarantee there will be a way around it before the thing is ever released. Someone is probably reverse engineering it right now.

[funkmaster]

Originally posted by KRL

Similarly, an e-mail sender's computer would be required to spend about 10 seconds solving a complex math problem and attaching proof of the effort to a message, Dwork said.

... damn, that is fucking smart, let me be the first to sell patched systems, I'd make a killer.

Oh no, wait a minute, I just keep some old linux boxes, they'll be worth millions in 20 years time.

[slackologist]

i can see that getting hacked pretty fast, nice idea though.. would take many years to implement it effectivley i'd think.

[wsjb78]

I use TMDA as challenge / response system and works fine for me.

[VirtuMike]

The only expense I'm going to incur is a legal bill from when we go after the authors of said plan for forcing us to use unnecessary computing time to send mail. Imagine - the real spammers are going to run massive clusters, which by the way aren't that expensive anymore, but Joe Surfer is going to take 45 minutes to get an email out to his dad on his p2-300 with 64 megs of ram.

Can we say "class action"?

[Trax]

its a dream
lets see what happens

[Merrioc]

Does make any sense to me. How are they going to know I am sending an email? what if I use outlook???? The port?

so its going to effect all the legit mailers and spammers are going to use a simple C++/vb mailer they write themselves, or there just gonna get Cygwin and run a unix based mailer from there PC.

Concept is good but as usual with anything MS does its flawed. Now if they had done this as an Open source project then maybe they would have seen that the idea blows. This is do different then setting a rate limit on a mail server.

there time would be better spent figuring out how to make there servers not so damn vulnerable to relaying

[slapass]

Spam is way down for me. Add in all the other barriers and anything that is new should keep closing down the weak hands.

[synergysex]

This is no secret - the idea has been floating around out there for a long time. And it is not a good idea unless you are Bill Gates. In fact, its one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard of.

E-mail was meant to be a low-cost alternative to using traditional communications mediums like telephones. It was purposefully meant to be unlimited and free or as close as possible to that. Charging for e-mail is a step backwards by about a decade or more - back when AOL and Prodigy charged you a per-mail recived fee.

We don't change the system to correct the misdeeds of a few misfits. We get rid of the misfits. We don't start charging for e-mail simply because there are spammers - we get rid of the spammers.

Its like fighting to make murder, rape or child molestation socially acceptable or perhaps avaliable for a small fee - simply because it exists. Of course we haven't working on doing that and we sure as hell shouldn't for obvious reasons.

[ronbotx]

Originally posted by SleazyDream
just shoot the 200 or so major spammers out there and no more problem

At the same time , two hundred of the slimiest, crooked, and scammimg, scumbag webmasters would disappear from GFY....

[sexsup]

It is a possible solution but I'm not sure it will works