Re: The future of the Email address, Part I (from Popco).

Tim Byars (tbyars@cris.com)
Sun, 2 Jun 1996 09:29:19 -0700


At 7:34 PM -0700 6/1/96, Adam Rifkin wrote:
>Date: 31 May 1996 08:10:03 -0700
>From: NetPost <netpost@netpost.com>
>Subject: The future of the Email address, Part I

>I - Public and Private addresses
>
>I have many editors, publishers and reporters who contact me
>now to give me a private email address to reach them at.

Yeah, this has been a necesssity for me already.

>II - The disappearing "MAILTO:" link in response to the
> automated address sniffers, and the "gif-izing"
> of our addresses
>
>Remember how excited you were when you made that first mailto
>link out of your email address and watched the mail form pop
>up in Netscape when you clicked on it? Well, take it down.
>In the past two months several companies have created specialized
>tools that seek out and return any mailto links they can find,

Interesting...

>III - Advanced filtering packages
>
>I am expecting at any moment a new email pop-client that
>does the following:
>
>The moment email arrives, a mini-box pops up that says do you want
>to block this address from sending future email to you?

EudoraPro sort of already has this in place.

>
>IV - An increase in the email terrorism response
>
>I listened to a 20 year-old college student who told me how,
>in less than 20 minutes, he could write a PERL script that would
>nearly destroy any email address he wanted to by sending a 100MB
>email message to it over and over automatically all day long.
>Imagine if ACME spam company irritated this kid. All he needs
>is one valid email address at ACME and he can bring them to their
>knees. He said that this was nothing compared to what he could do
>if he really worked at it.

Gee, he needs to hang out with smarter college students. :-) I wrote a
mail bomb in C in 5 minutes and I went to a fine arts college.

Seriouisly, data terrorism is going to happen. The last time Rohit and
Ernie were over at my place we discussed how we could bring down the
"entire" Internet in a night with only my rig, a 6 pack of Jolt and a good
pizza. You have to wonder when the terrorists on both the left and right
are going to discover this. And you have to wonder who will be the first
target?

Tim

--

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