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TheBat English » The Bat! - Configuring the E-mail Client
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hashcash?, Can I use this in The Bat!
 
#1
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I was wondering if it was possible to configure The Bat! Pro to use hashcash. I was able to create hashcash headers with it, but I just don't know how to take it beyond that point. The use of hashcash isn't self-explanatory.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the website can be found here: http://hashcash.org/
 
 
 
#2
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Not a peep? Well, I guess it is just too complicated of a  subject. When doing a Google search for hashcash there just wasn't a lot out there about the subject. What was out there was just too complicated for me to figure out.
 
 
 
#3
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Hmmm looks like a project that never got much traction. Updated, but all the site info is 4 years out of date.

Interesting idea... but... Doesn't looks like a lot of people took up the idea of validating e-mail by forcing their PC to spend time generating a hash before each and every e-mail could be sent out so it slows things down (not complicated)... the real issue of course, is that the receiver has to support the effort and I don't recall any site or mail client rejecting e-mail for lack of a hashcash header or supporting it! (e.g., I refuse to accept your e-mails unless you spent 10 seconds generating this hash for EACH and EVERY mail you send to me, for a spammer, high cost over 10,000 mails).

Seems popular with blogs or CMS though....
http://drupal.org/project/hashcash
http://wordpress-plugins.feifei.us/hashcash/

And that makes sense in that capacity.

I wouldn't do it to you or anyone else though ;) ...  it is just a step below challenge/response forcing a challenge on every sender every time they send you an e-mail, which I never bothered with anyway (you send me an e-mail, I automatically send you an e-mail that sez unless you click this link and enter a code I will never see your mail).

Really, it forces everyone you deal with to meet YOUR requirements. Great ideas out there, but these things fail in implementation.
 
 
 
 
#4
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Thanks for your reply Andrew, and thanks for filling in the blanks. I was wondering why I could not find any additional reading material on this subject in a web search. It looked like it was a very promising idea for a very short time in history, then suddenly just died.

So, it bit the big one. That explains why there wasn't a sudden flood of different hashcash software programs on the internet. Well, now I know not to bother with this idea.

I don't know if I agree with your view of the challenge response idea. I don't get spam so I have no need for such a service. However, if I was in the condition some of my friends are in, getting about 500 to 1,000 spam emails a day, I would implement that idea. At least for one year. That should send spammers running the other way. :)
 
 
 
#5
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You forget that spammers just don't care. All you do is inconvenience every legit person that sends you mail.
Spam is nowadays sent by bots, the return addresses almost always not the address of the spammer and so on. Even in the very few cases that responses to spam are monitored, ANY reply just verifies that the spammed address exists so the address will just be promoted to *always spam*
This idea reminds me a lot of current activation schemes for games and software. Legit users get bothered with annoying stuff and people that pirate the software just don't care.
 
 
 
#6
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Dominik,

Now that was exactly what I was thinking. I thought, "How does this fight spam? Doesn't that little hashcash stamp tell the spammer that I exist here and spam away?"

I could see how it legitimized me to my friends and family, but that was about it.

Unfortunately, I am not real tech minded, and they really presented the idea that way. So, I didn't understand it all, and thought if I don't see how it fights spam it must be because I don't understand it. Guess I was more techie than I thought. :)  
 
 
 
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