> From: Ed Gerck
> ...
> If we force strangers to jump some hoops before their email can reach
> our mailboxes, it seems clear to me that we can still keep receiving
> email from strangers.
That is the e-postage and other...I'm sorry but the best phrase is
"snake oil." There is no and can never be a hoop that is low enough
to pass enough human strangers but exclude spammers' computers. If
your hoop passes mail from
- the deaf
- the blind
- those who don't understand the spoken form of your native tongue
as well as a computer
- those who don't use graphics (e.g. lynx)
- whose whose computers don't play audio files (mine doesn't)
- those who don't have computers made within the last 5 years
- the tired, confused, or intoxicated
- the lazy or disinterested
- the mentally challenged or just plain stupid
then it will also pass mail from spammer's computers.
The idea of forcing your correspondents to jump through hoops that
spammers' computers can't is fundamentally wrong and crazy. If there
is one good characterization of the difference between human and
mechanical minds it is that machines are far better at jumping through
hoops than we are. Computers are happy to try a bazillion times until
they get it right. We get bored. A spammer's computer will happily
continue trying to guess the answer to your puzzle as long as you let
it, or look for it in a crib sheet of 1,000,000,000 clues. We not
only won't; we can't.
Only the meta-hoop of fear of prosecution might work. 419 spam
demonstrates its severe limitations.
Vernon Schryver vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxx