Spam blocking using your Whitelist

[Algr]

TL;DR

A simple way to block almost all bulk and unwanted mail, calls, and text, that can be implemented without law enforcement.

Well there is yet another security failure in the news. This time it is from Apple. Ugg.

About a year ago I was on a Discord and asked someone who was a networking engineer about what I thought was a simple way to block unwanted communications. He became very annoyed with me and told me to implement it myself, but did not give any reasons why it would not work. Here is what I was thinking:

1. E-mail readers automatically reject any e-mail that is not in your address book or whitelist.

2. To put someone on your whitelist, you can turn off your blocker for three minutes, long enough for them to send you a mail. Or you can manually add their address, or send them a mailing.

3. You can also subscribe to a whitelist bypass service. If someone needs to send you an e-mail and has no other way to contact you, they can pay the bypass service $2 to send the message through. They keep $1, and give you the other dollar for receiving the mail. This is also how government and emergency services may contact you.

So, if someone asks for your email, phone number, text, or whatever, first you would give it to them, and then when they are ready to send it, you turn on your three minute unblock. When the correct e-mail comes through, you accept it, while rejecting any spam that might come through in that three minutes.

This makes all existing e-mail lists worthless, because they would need both your address, and the address of someone you accept mail from.

So I must be missing something. Why isn't this common?

 

[jedishrfu]

From what you said it seems too manual and it requires some configuration and coordination on your part to turn the blocker on and then off and then on again.

 

[FactChecker]

I would also allow any emails from any address that I had sent an email to.

In general, you would probably block a lot of emails that you want and need. What are you going to do with them, just trash them automatically?
My current spam inbox gets about 70 spam emails a day. When a spam email gets through to the inbox, I just have to click on the spam identifier. That seems reasonably easy.

 

[Algr]

From what you said it seems too manual and it requires some configuration and coordination on your part to turn the blocker on and then off and then on again.

There would be one button that turns the blocker off, and then turns in on again after three minutes. (Or once you accept the e-mail you want.)

I would also allow any emails from any address that I had sent an email to.

Yes. So your whitelist might not be the same as just your address book.

In general, you would probably block a lot of emails that you want and need. What are you going to do with them, just trash them automatically?

If the e-mail bounces, at least the person trying to contact you will know it didn't get through. Lots of important e-mails get lost in the spam. I've had work offers get lost like that.
Any e-mail, text, or call you need ought to be coming from an address you know, or can add above. The constantly changing ones are the spammers. So ironically, whitelisting every e-mail you've ever received would still block most spammers.

My current spam inbox gets about 70 spam emails a day. When a spam email gets through to the inbox, I just have to click on the spam identifier. That seems reasonably easy.

Many spam mails are written to confuse you into thinking they come from someone you already know. And if this succeeds one time in a thousand, you'll get conned every two weeks. Not everyone is as web savvy as us. And I find it exausting.

 

[Baluncore]

How about this alternative.
Maybe if PayPal got its act together, it could charge you 10 cents per email sent by you, and forward the 10 cents to the recipient's PayPal account. If the recipient replies, you get 10 cents back. All your received email would come through PayPal, so spam you ignore would put 10 cents into your account.
You profit, if you do not reply, the spammer does not.
Instead of 10 cents, it could be a token you purchased from PayPal at the current rate.
When you sign up for a subscription service, you would pay tokens ahead, or always reply. That makes unsubscribing simple.

 

[Filip Larsen]

So I must be missing something. Why isn't this common?

You can then only establish email communication if you can establish a different (non-email) channel of secure or at least trusted communication. The current modes of operation with email clients (mostly) able to classify spam as spam (based on your previous mails and positive/negative lists) do more or less have the same effect as what you propose. Most people never inspect their spam folder and assuming "perfect" spam detection they never or almost never have to. You are even free to set up your client (if possible) to delete detected spam instead if you like, so that makes it even more what you propose.

Perhaps you want to look over known anti-spam techniques if you haven't already.