[thelist] Serious antispam measures

[Richard Harb]

Monday, April 19, 2004, 12:55:47 PM, you wrote:

> 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.

In a perfect world people would probably do that. But:

If I took the time to formulate an email with a business request or
actually a proposal and it got bounced back to me my first and only
reaction would probably be, "Go to hell" and I'd turn to my next
choice (and there's always somebody else who can do the job).

Except maybe if it came from Jeffrey Zeldman :)

I don't have any solution to your spam problem and I know enough
people who suffer the same fate, but making it difficult for people to
contact me can not be an option - at least not if I *want* to do
business.

.. just had to ..
Richard