On 4/11/23 20:48, John Levine wrote:
I don't think that "easy to send a bazillion messages in a short time" was a goal of email's design.Nobody ever said it was, but the fact that you can do so is a key reason we have email spam.
There are several ways of describing the conditions that permit email spam.
At least at one time, it was common to hear that the problem was that people could send a bazillion messages for (nearly) zero cost.
In these days of widespread DDoS attacks and IP address blocking,
you could also say that the spam problem is caused by it being
easy to originate mail from anywhere.
An alternative description could be that it's easy to create large
numbers of distinct pseudonymous email sender addresses. (which
is why authentication by itself doesn't necessarily address the
problem.)
Another is that email makes it easy for a sender to send to any
number of strangers without prior arrangement.
How one chooses to describe the conditions may presume a
particular kind of solution, or exclude one. But that doesn't
mean it's the only way to think about it.
Keith
