[thelist] Serious antispam measures

[Kasimir K]

Hi Michael,

if the world only was this simple...

> 1, Give up email

The objective here is to make email usable despite of spam. Giving up 
the use of it does not make it usable, don't you agree?

> 2.Use a  white list

This is quite good option, but it has one fundamental flaw: you have to 
add a person on your white list for them to be able to email you. But if 
you require something in the message, and inform the senders about this 
requirement automatically (e.g with auto reply), then then people you 
don't know will be able to contact you.

An example why this is important: Somebody sees a website I have built, 
and wants me to build on for them too. The easiest way to contact me is 
by email, so they drop me a line. If I use a white list, and reject 
mails not found on it, I've just lost business. But if I instead auto 
reply them with instruction "please include phrase 'I want a web site by 
kasimir-k' in your message" (just an example phrase), they will be able 
to email me. The requirement is easy enough, they don't have to visit 
any website to learn it, or do anything too complicated - just simple 
copy-paste from an email they get to their inbox.

White list is of course perfect solution if you never want to be 
contacted by unknown people. But then you would be using white list 
anyway, regardless of spam.


.k