The Spam Has Got To Go — (link via HtP) —
“I used to think that spam was akin to junk mail that we all get in our physical mailboxes. I once even argued that I got more junk postal mail than junk email. Those days are long gone. It has now become a daily deluge. It is analogous to people driving by your house and stuffing your mailbox with trash and pornographic materials and other insults to your intelligence and your morals. People are advised to get a new email address to avoid the problem. That is analogous to having to pick up your furniture and family and move to a new house. And then within days if not hours, be found and have your mailbox stuffed once again.”
The author gets it right, until they hit the paragraph at the end stating (along with Jon Udell) that digital IDs and signed emails are the solution. That’s the problem — one can’t wander around telling all your correspondents to rebuild their email systems, and use new methods simply to talk to one. And even then, a whole new — and scary — layer of infrastructure needs to be built to issue, guarantee, and revoke the IDs, and let’s hope to ghod it’s not Verisign ;) It’s just not viable.