[Asrg] Email passwords

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler at dwheeler.com>]

I've looked over the discussion lists, and I
noted that one anti-spam measure that I use hasn't
been mentioned as far as I can tell by this group.
It's an approach that I call "email passwords".

It's a trivial approach. Just designate some word/phrase as your
email password. If a message has the email password in the subject
line, rank the message as much less likely to be spam,
or just throw it immediately into your Inbox.
Then make information on how to figure out that password
available to others in a shrouded way (e.g., as a graphic
on your website).  You can also include "reply marker"
text in your replies, and search mail bodies for that text too.

In some ways, it's stupid; this can't even PRETEND to be the
Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem (TM).
But It Works For Me (TM), and I think that if it works, it's not stupid.
In particular, I get so much spam (~1000 messages/day
last I checked) that I _MUST_ automatically
delete any message marked as spam, without manual review.
Email passwords let me sleep better at night, because strangers
are more likely to be able to get their email through to me.
Basically, email passwords partially counter one of the
main drawbacks of filters, because they reduce the risk of a false
positive. Combined with filtering, whitelists, and blacklists, this 
approach can help.

More info is at:
 http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/spam-email-password.html

Sorry if this is old hat to everyone.  I just haven't seen
this simple approach discussed elsewhere.

I don't think there's any reason to create a subgroup
for this trivial idea, nor is there a need to
standardize antyhing.  But perhaps it might be worth a mention
in one of the outputs of the filtering group, and/or any
documentation that tries to cover "all the ways to counter spam".
And maybe there IS something that needs standardizing
based on this.

Thanks for your time.

--- David A. Wheeler


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