More on Attention Bonds

Slashdot has a post up that revisits Attention Bonds for e-mail, another attempt to stop spam. With that comes a short FAQ and then extended Q and A.

The Slashdot article is interesting only for the ability to view the comments of those that read Slashdot (for good or bad).

The Attention Bond is very basically a system where you pay someone to be able to send to them. If they read it and are okay with it, then you get the money back. Otherwise (say in the case of spam), you would keep the money and therefore make it completely stupid for spammers to operate.

Speaking of completely stupid, this entire idea is retarded and should be taken out and shot. The potential for abuse in this system goes from the obvious all the way down to the fact that people are lazy and won't use this correctly.
The only good thing it has in there is the whitelisting features.

If I recall correctly we covered this before and it appears that the people that are trying to get this started are seeing that people don't like the idea. As with most anti-spam ideas, if people don't like it, the creator(s) assume that it is due to not understanding the concept.
While in some cases that may in fact be true - I think in this case the main issue is that the idea (while it very likely would work in the perfect theorized scenarios) is just outright bad for everyday use by everyday Joe Blow idiots - and that is who makes up 99% of the iternet.

But hey, feel free to read all about it and make the decisions on your own - clearly I have stated my opinions on it.

Posted by Eric at July 25, 2004 11:29 AM | TrackBack