Hello All,
Many a times my clients as well as I face problems with sending small software files as attachments by email because the spam filters of various email providers block even genuine messages. Emailing has become very unreliable to send important messages. Many a times even genuine text mails are rejected by servers.
There have been attempts by some email providers to use a paid stamp like system for emails so that those emails are not rejected by other providers. however this is a private effort and prices may vary from different email providers. Rivalry between providers could also result in problems of access.
The postal department of any country is the Govt. flagship and is never private. Postal agreements are between governments of nations. So can we have a similar agreement on email stamps (digital signatures) by postal depts. of every nation where a national online account is created for users within that country and this account is refilled locally just like the mobile pre-paid refills. As a statutory requirement, all email providers must recognize and accept mails that carry these Postal Estamps and deliver the messages directly to the inbox of the recipient. Offline email clients like Thunderbird can carry an option to 'add estamp'. The estamp account holder simply clicks a button which uses a user_name and password to fetch a stamp and attach it to the mail. The mail will be sent only after the stamp is fetched so its headers will not contain any information of the estamp login/passwd. The cost of estamps will be definitely lower than normal postage and that may also encourage more senders to get net savvy. All stamps will be of the same value, say 5paise to 25paise per stamp. The high volume of genuine mail traffic will provide a huge revenue for the Postal Dept.
The spam guards can continue to filter mails like they did before except for *any* mails from *any* server that carries an estamp. This will also help recognize many small local mail servers that directly send mail and are otherwise rejected by other servers. We can setup our own mail servers that will be recognized by all.
Regards,
Rony.
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On 11/01/07 00:16 +0530, Rony wrote: <snip>
the mobile pre-paid refills. As a statutory requirement, all email providers must recognize and accept mails that carry these Postal Estamps and deliver the messages directly to the inbox of the recipient.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Offline email clients like Thunderbird can carry an option to 'add estamp'. The estamp account holder simply clicks a button which uses a user_name and password to fetch a stamp and attach it to the mail. The
Attach a stamp? Sucks, because my systems will never see that email. In protocol rejection is far nicer.
mail will be sent only after the stamp is fetched so its headers will not contain any information of the estamp login/passwd. The cost of estamps will be definitely lower than normal postage and that may also encourage more senders to get net savvy. All stamps will be of the same value, say 5paise to 25paise per stamp. The high volume of genuine mail traffic will provide a huge revenue for the Postal Dept.
The spam guards can continue to filter mails like they did before except
You assume that good spam reducing solutions filter based on content. Spam is about consent, not content.
for *any* mails from *any* server that carries an estamp. This will also help recognize many small local mail servers that directly send mail and are otherwise rejected by other servers. We can setup our own mail servers that will be recognized by all.
How do you propose to prevent stamp forgery? Or deal with zombie systems?
Micropayments do not work.
(Assume that I inserted the appropriate checks in the FUSSP evauluation form here).
Devdas Bhagat
e stamps? And go back to the snailmail mail days?? Why do we need to complicate our lives furthur?
Sachin G.
On Thursday 11 January 2007 00:16, Rony wrote: <snip>
Forget all this. Start using GPG.
Mrugesh Karnik wrote:
On Thursday 11 January 2007 00:16, Rony wrote:
<snip>
Forget all this. Start using GPG.
1. Does it work with thunderbird?
2. Will it ensure that any mail to any service provider's recipient will never get dropped or bounced, subject to file size limits?
3. Does it work with web based free email services like yahoo, gmail, rediffmail, hotmail?
Regards,
Rony.
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On Thursday 11 January 2007 22:41, Rony wrote:
Mrugesh Karnik wrote:
On Thursday 11 January 2007 00:16, Rony wrote:
<snip>
Forget all this. Start using GPG.
- Does it work with thunderbird?
Try the enigmail extension. I think that's the name. I don't use Thunderbird. Kmail supports GPG pretty well.
- Will it ensure that any mail to any service provider's recipient will
never get dropped or bounced, subject to file size limits?
Well the service provider can use domainkeys. From what I've read, Yahoo has published it under GPLv2. It also has submitted the RFC to IETF.
- Does it work with web based free email services like yahoo, gmail,
rediffmail, hotmail?
Uhhh, no, but if they choose to ignore a standard (de facto maybe, if not de jure) like PGP, what makes you think they'll go ga-ga over the estamps idea?
Was this idea intended to be practical?
Mrugesh Karnik wrote:
On Thursday 11 January 2007 22:41, Rony wrote:
- Does it work with web based free email services like yahoo, gmail,
rediffmail, hotmail?
Uhhh, no, but if they choose to ignore a standard (de facto maybe, if not de jure) like PGP, what makes you think they'll go ga-ga over the estamps idea?
Was this idea intended to be practical?
It was intended to be a Govt. initiative that would add legal weight to mails so that they don't get dropped or bounced, unless a particular email address is blocked for other reasons. It would also provide revenue to the postal dept. Inter-Govt. agreements at international levels can go a long way to solve this problem.
As technology grows better, its problems increase too. Today IMHO email has lost its importance in sending official or complaint mail. The influence of a paper letter is still hard to beat. Email is a hit and run system. You may get lucky or your mail will be simply dropped.
Regards,
Rony.
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It was intended to be a Govt. initiative that would add legal weight to mails so that they don't get dropped or bounced, unless a particular email address is blocked for other reasons. It would also provide revenue to the postal dept. Inter-Govt. agreements at international levels can go a long way to solve this problem.
Hmm... sounds spooky. Sorry if i'm being a little bit of a conspiracy nut here, but do we really want government(S) to control who can mail and who can't?
If a goverment puts down a law that states only mails with this ``e-stamp" or whatever can go through and others can't; and this legislation has to be obeyed by all the ISP's of the country - well we would have quite a mess then.
Its the same old story, more regulation and over administration ultimately end up messing up the system and causing pain to the people and giving extreme power into the hands of a few.
Not a good situation to be in.
As technology grows better, its problems increase too. Today IMHO email
has lost its importance in sending official or complaint mail.
Why so :-) Many companies take email complaints seriously. Of course the customer may feel much better after shouting at someone in a call center rather than punching keys ;-)
The
influence of a paper letter is still hard to beat.
Very true, a few nibbles and bits cannot compare to a personal touch. Also, where there is no infrastructure there is no other choice.
Regards,
- vihan
Vihan Pandey wrote:
It was intended to be a Govt. initiative that would add legal weight to mails so that they don't get dropped or bounced, unless a particular email address is blocked for other reasons. It would also provide revenue to the postal dept. Inter-Govt. agreements at international levels can go a long way to solve this problem.
If a goverment puts down a law that states only mails with this ``e-stamp" or whatever can go through and others can't; and this legislation has to be obeyed by all the ISP's of the country - well we would have quite a mess then.
That will not happen as we have gone beyond this stage. Email is too free and independent to be curbed like that. But a valid 'estamp' type technique could at least ensure that those mails are not dropped or bounced.
Any other method to solve the problem of mail delivery failures? :)
Regards,
Rony.
___________________________________________________________ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
Sometime on Friday 12 January 2007 22:30, Rony said:
That will not happen as we have gone beyond this stage. Email is too free and independent to be curbed like that. But a valid 'estamp' type technique could at least ensure that those mails are not dropped or bounced.
Any other method to solve the problem of mail delivery failures? :)
Someone has already suggested Yahoo DomainKeys which identifies legitimate mail servers. http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
Its going through the IETF standardisation process and any email service provider can implement it.
Anurag
On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 10:41:30PM +0530, Rony wrote:
Forget all this. Start using GPG.
- Does it work with thunderbird?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigmail
- Does it work with web based free email services like yahoo, gmail,
rediffmail, hotmail?
One can attach a file, or copy-paste the relevant portions generated using GPG. But, for convenient use, the answer would be a no.
Kumar
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Anurag -
Devdas Bhagat -
Kumar Appaiah -
Mrugesh Karnik -
Rony -
Sachin G Nambiar -
Vihan Pandey