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Re: [Asrg] Please critique my anti-spam system

Laird Breyer <laird@lbreyer.com> Mon, 10 January 2005 08:12 UTC

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Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:45:47 +1000
From: Laird Breyer <laird@lbreyer.com>
To: asrg@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Please critique my anti-spam system
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On Jan 10 2005, Michael Kaplan wrote:

> I would also reiterate the impossibility that a company can exist in
> the developing world that would decode CAPTCHA for a legitimate
> company (Paypal, Amazon, etc.), then also sell the same decoded list
> spammers, and expect to keep that company's business for more than a
> week.  It would become INSTANTLY obvious that the company was
> dishonest when every decoded address is then flooded with spam.

Where else but the developing world would you send the CAPTCHAs for
decoding? Nowhere in the developed world can you offer decoding at 0.1
cent per CAPTCHA.

Figure $5 per hour minimum wage, at 10 seconds per CAPTCHA, that's 
a pure labour cost of slightly more than 1 cent per CAPTCHA. Add in other
expenses, frequent pauses, mistakes etc and probably 3 cents / CAPTCHA is
a basic developed world estimate.

Given this huge difference in cost, the fact that decoded addresses are
being resold is largely irrelevant. Who is going to offer a competing
service and take away their business? 

Moreover, companies in the developing world are usually quite safe
from legal attacks originating in the developed world. So it's easy
money. You really have to make sure the decoded CAPTCHAs are useless
if you want to stop them being sold.

-- 
Laird Breyer.

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