Why Yahoo's marriage of RSS and e-mail could be an antispam breakthrough
Link: Why Yahoo's marriage of RSS and e-mail could be an antispam breakthrough
Richard Bliss once said:
What if e-mail was re-architected so that, instead the keeping e-mail on the recipient’s system prior to opening it (the way e-mail basically works today), e-mail was kept on the sender’s system?
I have mentioned something similar to people before, and they have pretty much thought I was insane, but I do truly believe that moving mail from a store-and-forward model to the store-and-get model a better one. We do need a few associated technologies, though:
- We need FOAF
- We need a publishing protocol. Atom provides that
- We need a consistent format. RSS is not — We need Atom
Comments
Comment from Chris Hester on 2005-12-05 17:02
“What if e-mail… was kept on the sender’s system?”
Wouldn’t that mean the sender would have to be online for you to receive it? What if they have a slow computer? Or a dial-up connection? Besides, emails are kept on a server. The user downloads them only if they wish. They can choose to only download the headers if they like.
Comment from Arve on 2005-12-06 10:40
No, in this case “the sender’s system” == “a web server that the sender has access to”. Think about the feed model of mail like this:
A sender has access to a web server with some weblog-like software. In this software, he can set an access-control list individually for each individual message, so that only the intended recipients are able to read it. As a mail recipient, you will be subscribed to the senders weblog, reading it with authentication. The entries that go into the feed you read will only be the entries you are supposed to be reading.
As a practical upshot, anyone who wants you to read their messages will first have to post a request to have them added to your address book, much like you see with IM today: People can’t actually send you anything unless you have approved them. A mechanism for making this easier could be FOAF, so that your friends friends would be able to have themselves automatically added. Similarily, you could keep a list of people you don’t trust at all: If I add Joe Spammer to my enemy list, Joe Spammer’s friends are going to have a harder time contacting me.
This model solves a few particular problems:
Having said all that, such a system would need some additional mechanisms, such as a ping end-point for people already added to your FOAF (Address book). But I truly do believe that such a system is viable, and a better long-term solution than the horrendous mess regular e-mail has become.
Comment from Chris Hester on 2005-12-08 10:34
“Spammers could no longer use someone else’s address in the from field when contacting you.”
Couldn’t they forge this like anything else?
I’ve read about a ‘request first’ method before, but many emails are sent from people who aren’t known to you before. Wouldn’t this delay those? (You’d have to OK them, which would be difficult without reading the contents first.)
Comment from Arve on 2005-12-08 11:50
No, because the end-point you contact when reading a message is simply a URI/IRI, that they would need to be in control of.
Comment from Asbjørn Ulsberg on 2006-01-05 16:49
I’ve discussed this in length with you before, Arve, and I still think it’s a very good idea. Think of how you allow IM buddies to chat with you. First, you accept their invitation, then (on some protocols) they will accept yours. When this handshake is complete, you can chat as much as you want both ways and no spammer has yet found a way to break it. Yes, someone could spam you with invitations, but that’s a lousy form of spam since no advertisement message will reach the receiver.
This handshake will also need to be used in a feed-based mail system, and if the receiver of an invitation has a feed-based mail server, the handshake can be two-ways so A can send to B and likewise. A will need to approve of B’s invitation and vice versa. When that’s done, every time A wants to send something to B, he publishes it in B’s feed. When B wants to read what A might have written to him lately, he connects to A’s feed and downloads it. If A suddenly fills his feed with advertisement and spam, B can easilly unsubscribe (e.g. cancel the approval) and A has no way of reaching B but to re-invite B to read his feed.
The idea is wonderful and it will work.
This discussion has been closed. No further comments may be added.