Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates told a group of delegates that he could crack spam by 2006. The soon-to-be-knighted Microsoft chairman added that with the help of some canny tech measures, spammers would be hit where it hurts--in their fat wads of Viagra-inspired cash.
One of the suggestions on Gates' antispam checklist is setting those sending e-mails a simple brainteaser, or asking their PCs to do an easy computation. If you're sending an odd e-mail or two, the time and difficulty wouldn't pose much of a problem. For machines belching out huge amounts of spam day in and day out, however, the cost and computing power needed to send the e-mails off through the ether would be huge.
Gates also said Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is working on another "magic solution" to the spam problem--this time with a focus on the identifying the sender.
The "payment at risk" system would involve e-mail recipients setting a level of payment that would tax the sender, if its e-mail were rejected, low or high, depending on how greatly recipients were bothered by the unwanted e-mail.
The idea goes like this: If you receive an e-mail from an old school friend, and you're happy to receive it, the sender doesn't pay. If it's another offer of a porn subscription, you reject it, and the spammer is forced to cough up.
That's the theory, at least. But Martino Corbelli, a spokesman for U.K. spam-filtering company SurfControl, doesn't buy it. "I think the idea is a nice one, and I don't disagree that in a few years' time, the spam epidemic will reduce--that will happen. But as for charging someone when you don't know who they are and where they are--it's not feasible," he told Silicon.com.
The tech old guard of spam fighting--the humble mail filter--wasn't entirely rejected by Gates. He acknowledged that filters have their part to play in the spam struggle but said he believed that they wouldn't ultimately solve the problem.
Gates' spam offensive has left Corbelli unimpressed. "I think he's right on the timescale; I think he's wrong on the method. We simply don't have the infrastructure to know who to charge," he said.
The REAL solution is for all SMTP servers to do the following:
1) The relay of external email is banned.
2) Ensure that users depositing email to the SMTP server are users of that domain only.
3) The SMTP server must not route user email which has the FROM address different to the SMTP domain.
4) All external email deposited to an SMTP server must only come from an SMTP server from a registered domain (reverse lookup)
5) The SMTP server must use a centralised blacklist (see below).
6) SMTP server can only receive email from other SMTP servers unless you are a user with that domain.
There are many blacklists which are good but none are funded and run by a world internet organisation - there should only be one blacklist which contains SMTP servers which are known spamers.
It would be up to the SMTP administrators to ensure that their users do not send bulk email - if they do then the SMTP server will end up of the backlist - effectively cutting it off from all who use the blacklist.
The alternative to a blacklist is the inclusion of a marker with the DNS for MX records. The marker indicates SMTP servers that are blacklisted.
To implement this it will mean that mail systems will need to comply with a worldwide rules/standard. The IETF should be headed up to make this happen.