I read an article on the BBC site today that said that only 3-4% of email received was actually genuine mail.

I would suggest that something should be done but let's face it the spammers will probably find a way around anything. It's depressing.

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jht

Sadly though, the one way round it that is likely to be used is to pay people in poor countries a pittance to sit there all day and click kittens.

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I'm sure the first spam filtering software writers thought they'd cracked it :-(
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jht

pay people in poor countries

Nail well and truly hit on head.

Humans are the cheapest computers on the planet, but I suggest that increasing the perceived value of a human life is likely to be a harder task than defeating spam.
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simon

The way forward (pontificateth he) is a mechanism where you don't send an email anywhere, you just put it on your own message server and tag it as being for one or more intended recipients. Other people do the same on their message servers.

People who you've previously approved then periodically poll your message server asking if there's anything for them, and your message server periodically polls the message servers of your past correspondents seeing if there's anything for you.

Finally, instead of all 'email' being delivered into a particular recipient's mailbox, this new 'not email' is put into a box on your machine tagged as being "From" that sender. So you have lots of "Sender" drop boxes instead of one "Recipient" dropbox.

You can then erect whatever barriers you like to becoming one of the lucky few granted permission to poll and deliver to your local message server, and that keeps the spammers from reaching you.

As for someone you've never heard from before legitimately needing to get in touch, well maybe you don't erect such quite high barriers for permission to put stuff in the drop box for 'new correspondent requests', and you continue to filter that for spam leaving you to concentrate on the stuff you know has come from legitimate senders via your pre-approved channels.

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simon

I also don't feel comfortable about surrendering email to spammers but I think you may have a point - fighting spam could end up being a pyhric (have I spelt that right?) victory.

I think this actually just echoes my original point about how depressing it is that people should have to expend all this effort to escape brainless marketing.
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jht

The parchment concept divides the message body from the transport method and allows them to be configured independently. A common transport device is similar in style to a parchment and has the same inherent signal absorbing qualities but it has been folded in a way that creates an internal space for insertion of the original parchment. As an analog, consider the solid casing in which a typical Xbox game is stored but a): thinner, b): more flexible and c): usually white instead of green.

The destination ID of the transport is typically recorded on the front of the transport parchment (technically known as an "envelope" after the TCP/IP envelope). It is usually recorded using the same signals used to record the users message onto the enclosed parchment but it may also be recorded using the little known Mail Wizard feature of Microsoft Word 2014 by following steps 1 through to 237 in the user manual.

Delivery of the content is accomplished by manually inserting the "envelope" (taking care to ensure that the enclosed recording is properly sealed) into the CD slot of the red transmission devices to be found installed on most high streets thanks to the assistance of a technology grant by Charles v2.0. A token is required to be attached to the envelope which can be purchased separately which is required to access the service. The transmission protocol utilised by these devices is fairly slow but mostly reliable. A sophisticated error correcting protocol ensures that the majority of envelopes arrive at their final destination even if the destination ID is not sufficiently complete. In some cases and error packet is returned back to the originating service with additional data appended to indicate the cause of the failure (frequently E_ADDRESS_NOT_FOUND).

Owing to the slow transmit rate and the additional cost involved with this service, there is less business justification for utilising it for sending spam although the opportunity exists. However compared to the 30 year old e-mail technology, the ratio of spam to valid content is typically a positive ratio.

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stevepa

http://www.openspf.org/aspen.html
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DrGoon