spam solution - why don't we have it?

As we all know, spam only continues because it's actually profitiable. It costs almost nothing to send out millions of messages, and if one in 10,000 is even paid attention to, it pays off.

I remember reading some time ago about the idea behind an email tax (sorry, can't find the read). The idea sounded disgusting at the time and still does. But what about a twist on it?

Have a setting where for the message to even get downloaded, the sender needs to attach a payment for five cents (or even just a penny, using some proprietary paypal-like system). If it's a message you want, there's just a refund button, you click it, and s/he gets his/her nickel back. Using this method, real messages should remain free, unless the recipient is an idiot. A permanent no-charge thing could be an option, but I think it wouldn't be effective unless it was tied to both the email address (easily spoofed) and the IP of the sender (fairly easily spoofed as well, but imagine trying to keep a DB of known ip/email combos specific to every recipient in the world), perhaps even throw in an ID generated of the hardware of the sender too just to make it a bit tricker for those trying to get around the system.

Even better is the idea that you're PAID to recieve spam until it dies off entirely.

Assume a spammer sends out a million spam messages a day. Yes, I'm making that up, but it's reasonable. That million messages goes from a couple dollars in power and internet for the day in costs to $50,000! At that rate, you're talking over a million dollars a month for EVERY spammer out there. Now I find it hard to believe they pull in anywhere near that much, and if they do, they're probably sending out ten times as much crap.

Anyone else think a system like this would be a good idea? Of course it would take a shedload of organization and implementation, but if it could be implemented, should we do it? I'm up for a few bucks a day just from checking my email until spam stops

 

There's a better solution. Don't charge money but charge processing power. If you make system where each message has to perform some calculation in order to unlock a key that allows the message to be sent. Then say that the key takes about 10 seconds to decrypt then that limits a spammers payload to only being able to send one message every 10 seconds. That's only 8640 emails per day per computer. It wouldn't affect normal emails too much but it should seriously slow down those that send bulk emails.

 

That's a pain for people that have legitimate mailing lists, and that algorythm would get outdated quickly with time, and could easily be avoided, as can any software solution.

 

Ideally we need to ditch the whole antiquated process that is Email and implement something better.

 

alphabetti spaghetti?

 

I had an idea for spam free email a while back. It's basically a rip of what MSNmessenger is.

If you want to email john@doe.com for the first time, you send a 'request message'. john@doe.com either accepts or denies that request. If accepted, you receive a 'key' which is somehow attached to all messages you want to send. If you want to email him from a different address or computer, the 'key' is easily copyable. However, if you then place john@doe.com on a spam list and give the spammer your key, john@doe.com can easily delete the key and you'll have to request another one all over again.

There are probably many, but the only flaw with this system I can see is that urgent emails will be difficult to send. First you have to wait for permission, then you can send the message.