--On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 21:01 -0400 Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 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. >... And yet another, which "we" regularly forget, is that, when email was first deployed on the ARPANET, there were no desktop computers with individual network connections and accounts, virtually all users were logging in to timeshared machines, and mailboxes were tied to those login accounts. Even if there was spam, there wasn't much possibility anonymous and unaccountable spam. From one point of view, today's design is a problem because of all of the changes (many of them desirable), including massive decentralization (as Bron sort of points out) of the last 50 years, but... > 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. right. john
