Microsoft aims to make spammers pay
Found on BBC News on Friday, 26 December 2003
Despite efforts to stem the billions of spam e-mails flooding inboxes, unwanted messages are still turning e-mail into a quagmire of misery.
Spammers send out tens of millions of e-mails to unsuspecting computer users every day, employing a myriad of methods to ensure their pills, loans and "requests for our lord" pleas fox e-mail filters.
The development has been called the Penny Black project, because it works on the idea that revolutionised the British postage system in the 1830s - that senders of mail should have to pay for it, not whoever is on the receiving end.
Now I have to admit that I haven't read lots of background information yet, but it sounds like there are workarounds. What if spammers simply add a previously solved puzzle to all their mails? After all, SMTP is a text-based protocol. Or perhaps there will just be a dramatic increase of worms generating millions of spam machines.