[107968] in Cypherpunks
Re: Idea to eliminate most spam on mailing lists
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Hohensee)
Sat Jan 30 13:35:10 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 18:28:03 +0000
From: Michael Hohensee <michael@sparta.mainstream.net>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Michael Hohensee <michael@sparta.mainstream.net>
Jay Holovacs wrote:
>
> At 05:11 AM 1/30/99 +0000, Michael Hohensee wrote:
> >
> >
> >It would, for about 15 seconds, when some enterprising spammer noticed
> >this and included it in his spam. Even if the passphrases were
> >different for each mailing list, it wouldn't take much to write a
> >program which monitors list traffic searching for such patterns, and
> >which incorporates said patterns into subsequent spam to that address.
> >
> Probably not. Most spammers are not looking at individual mailings and
> certainly not checking to see if a particular spam made it through a
> particular listserver then rewriting it to do so. They are doing a shotgun
> approach.
>
Right now they are, yes. But if a system like the one Stephen suggests
becomes widely used, there will be an incentive to write a program like
the one I've described above, it will get written, and voila, the
authentication method is nullified.
