Jargons of Info Tech industry

[Mike Meyer]

Tim Tyler <tim at tt1lock.org> writes:
> In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote or quoted:
>> Roedy Green <my_email_is_posted_on_my_website at munged.invalid> writes:
>> > Read my essay.
>> > http://mindprod.com/projects.html/mailreadernewsreader.html
>> >
>> > I talk around those problems.
>> 
>> Actually, you present a design that forces a solution that makes them
>> do what you want down their throats, never mind what they want, or
>> what they've been doing. It shows an amazing ignorance about the
>> internet and how people behave on it. Like most antispam proposals, it
>> won't actually stop spam, just force spammers to concentrate on
>> different channels. You seem to have randomly broken quoting for
>> people who download mail and read it offline, and for any medium
>> that's unreliable or doesn't reliably deliver messages "in order" -
>> which includes mail and news.  Virus writers will love the ability to
>> change peoples address books remotely.
>
> Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
> to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
> to those people with access to the sender's private key.

It's not confined to just people - software can do this as well. In
particular, you should expect that the users mail agent will have to
have access to the key, so it can automatically send out the change of
address notice when the user changes their address (it actually needs
it to send any mail). Viruses regularly make users mail agents do
thing. "Change my address" becomes much more entertaining when that
triggers sending out change of addresses notices to everyone in the
address book. More likely, though, there'll be an API for getting the
key so that users can change mail agents without invalidating the
public key that everyone they correspond with has for them, and the
virus will just use that API.

This is also why his plan doesn't stop spam. Most spam comes from
zombies already. This will just cause them to masquerade as the owner
of the owned machine rather than somebody the author has a beef with.

      <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.