nixen
Rockin' the Boxen
Premium
join:2002-10-04
Alexandria, VA
 ·Cox HSI
 ·Speakeasy
| reply to BarneyBadAss
Re: Personally...
said by BarneyBadAss  :I can everyone start using encrypted email here before long as a way to get around the "Forensics" Encryption won't work for spammers. In order to read encrypted mail, the recipient has to already have a method of decrypting the message. That means that first they have to spam the recipient with a method for decrypting the actual spam message. Then, they have to hope that the person actually bothers to decrypt the message.
Encryption also exerts a non-trivial computing toll. One can send a LOT more messages much more cheaply by not encrypting.
-tom
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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -Louis D Brandeis |
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swhx7
Premium
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by nixen : first [spammers] have to spam the recipient with a method for decrypting the actual spam message. Then, they have to hope that the person actually bothers to decrypt the message. Or find out the public key for each recipient, which spammers could never do, it would destroy their cost/benefit ratio.
The fact that spam has to be unencrypted is a big plus - it imposes costs on the spammers as you point out, and makes spam remain open to inspection by this kind of system.
I think the original poster's concern was more about privacy of communications. Of course, ISPs have always had the ability to read customers' email, but the general understanding is that they don't and it remains private unless there is a law-enforcement investigation.
With anti-spam systems based on content, the anti-spam providers generally claim in public that they won't abuse their automated monitoring of content. Or at least they will acknowledge the ways they are using the content and have sought consent from the email sender if it's used for anything other than fighting spam - as in the case of Gmail where they use it for advertising.
Still, it seems to me that as services like this are used by ISPs (no longer only at the email server) the profit potential of mining email contents for marketing purposes will prove to be such an incentive that any pretence of privacy will become a lie very quickly.
Therefore the time has come for ordinary people (as well as techies) to start considering encryption.
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This post was made with 100% recycled electrons. |
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