So Bill Gates is still pushing forward with his idea to combat spam.
He’s been going at it for months saying that the best way to stop spam is by making people pay for emails.
Now, the idea has shaped up more into a plan to make users buy stamps to be able to send their emails.
I know that the math makes sense and that charging a small fee for emails will greatly reduce the number of spam mails sent, but then again it’ll also reduce the number of wanted emails.
The factor that made email so successful in the first place was that it’s free. Making people have to pay for it won’t work, they’ll just quit altogether.
Ok, so maybe they won’t have to pay ?
Maybe the postage stamp is just some processing time to solve a puzzle and show your good intention ?
Well, spammers have the money and resources to bring in more machines and let them give away the processing time.
I think that the problem enabling spam to thrive on is not the fact that it’s free but rather the underlying technology.
SMTP is not tight enough. It was good for the beginning when it was used by a small group of trustworthy people, but now that’s not the case and a big overhaul is needed for it. Tighter authentication should be built into it.
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