Comments on: It’s time to get rid of email

By: AlanSky

AlanSky — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:24:32 +0000

One solution might be that for professional emails, a global “by project” unique token (a la MAC/UUID style) should be generated by any company for all members of a project across companies or for internal departments with an expiration date.
It would be sent in the xtra headers of an email and match a pool of accepted professional email addresses.

Then if the company wants to restrict email usage, it may route all non-tokenized emails to a list of public email addresses of the company for clearing, and only properly tokenized emails could reach individuals of the company.

The drawback: the more tokens to store for one email address, the more searching for allowing an email to go through.

I don’t think this would require any change in the protocols.

Isn’t there something like that in some mail servers?

By: Chip

Chip — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:32:42 +0000

I think that a messaging system where you decided who was invited to a particular conversation (by invitation only) would be impervious to spam. The reason why we have spam is that anybody on the Internet can send you or me a message, and it costs very nearly 0 to do so.

By: Rick

Rick — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:56:33 +0000

You mention two separate problems: secure messaging and spam.

Secure messaging is available. You can use encryption and a secure email service such as “Sub Rosa” from novo-ordo.com.

Spam is more difficult. The reason we have so much spam is because it can be sent en mass at someone else’s expense. Most spam these days come from the armies of botnets that the spammer have set up with other people’s computers. This is easy for them to do because most people use a fundamentally insecure operating system. Unless that can be changed, I do not see a solution to the spam problem.

By: anonymous email

anonymous email — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:54:44 +0000

Email should be sent over SSL by default. Its a pitty that you have to “purchase” a certificate at Verisign, etc. It a f*** mafia.

Spoofing is also a problem at our email services. The US Army should hunt down Spammers instead of BinLaden. They cause much more problems!

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:30:33 +0000

No problem, Jon.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:19:48 +0000

argh.. forgive my fat fingers, please!

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:34:40 +0000

Jon, I happen to be one of those people who “does know whjat (sic) they are doing.” I am certain that I do not have any spyware or bot on any of my systems. Someone out there reaped my public email address and is spoofing me as the sender for their spam. I will admit that my address has been published on the web for all to see since 1997 — so I have brought this on myself to some degree.

Rather than give up on my long-standing address, I’ll probably set up some rule to just trash the delivery failure notices.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:52:38 +0000

Chip, it sounds like your machine belongs to someone else. If you’re getting 200 bounce-backs a day, then you definitely have a problem. Creating a new email address won’t stop it. You need to have your machine cleaned out. Find someone who really does know whjat they are doing and have all the spyware removed from your machine. Once that is done, stop using your “real” email address to sign up for stuff on the web. Use a temporary email service, or an online service such as YahooMail where you can create a “special” account that you use only for that purpose.
The problem you’re having isn’t with SMTP or your local email client. The problem you are having is almost certainly caused by using your email address as you sign up for online services, games, widgets, etc…
EMail me if I can help.

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:45:45 +0000

Yeah, I’d hate to do that, since I’ve had the same address of for more than eleven years. But it is getting pretty bad.

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:44:37 +0000

I’ll have to read up on that protocol to see if it could be used in the scheme I’m imagining. Thanks for the tip.

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:41:40 +0000

I think IM has similar issues, though some IM clients give you a little more control over who can talk to you.

Besides, one of the good things about email is that it doesn’t interrupt you. You can process it when you’re ready, instead of having a message pop up in front of your face.

I’ve noticed, though, that GTalk now buffers messages when you’re offline. That’s a step in the right direction.

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:38:43 +0000

Wow, it’s great to hear from you on this, Nathaniel.

After thinking on it overnight, I agree with you that email can never be fully replaced.

But I’d like to see a new messaging system that is centrally controlled and private (but provided with an API so client tools could access it, given proper authentication). I’d use that for communicating with my customers and my friends and family — and relegate email to initial contacts only. Then I could afford to ignore it most of the time.

The biggest problem I have with email right now is that it’s doing too many things. Some correspondence should be private, plus it gets lost in all the other noise.