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

[Laird Breyer <laird at lbreyer.com>]

On Jan 09 2005, Seth Breidbart wrote:
> Laird Breyer <laird at lbreyer.com> wrote:
> 
> > No it would not be. You can't have it both ways. On one side, you
> > say it would be cheap to decode CAPTCHAs by an army of human beings,
> > but now you say it would be expensive to decode CAPTCHAs by an army
> > of human beings.
> 
> The legitimate list-owner has to handle 1,000 CAPTCHAs a week (for a
> huge list).  That's $1.00.
> 
> The spammer sends 100,000,000 messages per week.  That's $100,000.

No. The CAPTCHA based addresses are worth much more than an ordinary
address. The CAPTCHA addresses don't filter spam, mail sent to them
are guaranteed to be seen prominently by the recipient. So a spammer
only needs to send 1000 spams to find a gullible person who'll respond.

And if the MUA implements special processing for the CAPTCHA challenges
(e.g. blinking popup window "please respond NOW to ensure mail delivery"),
then any fake CAPTCHAs are now getting a royal treatment even.

> 
> > I'm saying if the CAPTCHAs are decoded at 0.1 cent a pop, then the
> > decoder can increase profits by 100% simply by reselling the decoded
> > CAPTCHA at 0.1 cent a pop.
> 
> A lot more than that, since most of the .1 cent is cost.  But he can
> resell them for less, because they're free.

Yes.

-- 
Laird Breyer.

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg