[Nottingham] Challenge-Response systems

[Simon Huggins]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 01:35:43PM +0100, Michael Erskine wrote:
> On Friday 04 November 2005 10:30, Simon Huggins wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 11:19:59AM +0100, Michael Erskine wrote:
> > > The point with this particular CR system is that if you genuinely WANT
> > > to get your mail through then you can. Spam doesn't get through.
> > Don't be silly.  If (heaven forbid) CR actually becomes widespread then
> > spam does get through.
> I wasn't being silly: it does work -- ask him! I certainly wasn't
> suggesting that all forms of CR are great and "fine by me".

I see you didn't answer any of my questions in my previous mail.

> It might be better to consider this particular challenge-response system more 
> in the light of the various subscription type verification systems: y'know 
> the ones where the user is asked to enter a piece of text shown in an image 
> that is not so easily machine readable. The aim is to try and establish that 
> the person that sent the mail is real so they can be whitelisted. There's 
> probably quite a few ways to do that. Mailman uses something similar: a user 
> asks to subscribe and receives a confirmation email. Sounds less sinister 
> when compared to what we're actually using.

Mailman does it once; to be effective CR systems do it to every mail.

Simon.

-- 
[ "Wind the frog!"                                                     ]
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