Possibly stupid question, but why not stop e-mail spam in the same way we do IMs?

I don’t see how I could ever get spam-messages from, e.g. an xmpp account. Worst-case scenario is that I get a bunch of ‘subscription’ requests, and I can only add friends when I trawl through the requests, or if I know they’re adding a request at the time, then look out for that request.

Emails seem to let everything in, with a reliance on the admin to sort this out. Why not do the same thing?

Specifically, I’m thinking of writing a script:

  1. If this person’s in my contact-list, they’re cool.
  2. If they’re on the shit-list, they’re deleted.
  3. If not, they get into the ‘waiting room’.

… then set up a shortcut to put someone on the shit-list. So there’s no more ‘you’ve got mail’ notifications from random spammers, and I can review it once a week or so to pull the good-guys out.

Seems like a good idea, but then I wondered, why hasn’t this been done before? If the script works, it seems like someone could do the same thing with a GUI.

  • jackalope
    4·
    2 years ago

    I think this problem with spam arises from the design of email as you indicate and I think it’s a pretty serious problem. Kids these days don’t use email and they use it less and less because in part messaging platforms have features that email doesn’t. Businesses turn increasingly towards things like slack for similar reasons. Want to hold a group conversation by email? It’s a mess. Maybe you don’t want to be part of the email chain. Too bad! You can’t leave someone clicking reply all.

    Spam and the inability to really properly block is another issue.