[vox] Re: spam control: send email to confirm

[Sam Peterson]

On Wednesday, Jun 25 2003, Micah J. Cowan spake thus:
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 07:48:52PM -0700, Sam Peterson wrote:
> 
> > > But there really isn't any other way I can think of to confirm
> > > e-mails reliably.
> > 
> > PGP/GPG but that's way too complicated a bag-o-worms to open up for
> > mailing list subscriptions.
> 
> How would you use PGP to accomplish this? You could sign your
> request, but you would need to have some way for the server to
> obtain a copy of your public key, and verify that it is indeed the
> property of the e-mail address claiming to own it. This is nearly
> impossible.

Alright, yeah, shoot, you're right.  I was thinking that a web gateway
would retrieve the pgp/gpg key from a keyserver based on the email
that was entered and then you'd send a signed email to the mailing
list request address for confirmation.  But since so many people don't
use pgp/gpg, it's easy for someone to make a key for an email address
arbitrarily.

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| sam -- Programmer I                                                |
| University of California, Davis : Hart Interdisciplinary Programs  |
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