Distributed Opt-out
Cloudmark taps p-to-p to fight spam. Outlook add-in tool blocks junk e-mail from users' inboxes [InfoWorld: Top News]
Not really p2p, but what a terrific idea. I wonder what services Cloudmark could offer by amassing this data?
A huge problem with spam for legitimate marketers is actually knowing whether people are opt-in or not. I think that in addition to the common sense measure of including a valid return address in commercial email, they need to include a some unique identifier for the list your name was purchased from, potentially in a message header (of course they just state in it English, but we're looking for automation here). That way, throwing a single spam in an Outlook folder could unsubscribe you from all spam from that list provider. Legitimate list providers would then stay clear of Washington and California (and EU) anti-spam laws, by virtue of being filtered out on the client side.
Opt-out doesn't work at all because of the bad apples - opt-out to a dishonest spammer and you get put on tons more lists. Opt-out authority devolved to the client is very similar in architecture to RSS for getting web site changes (as compared to mailing lists).
There are plenty of spammers who would ignore this, but I suspect there's a business plan in there somewhere for Cloudmark beyond simple Brightmail-esque enterprise-spam filtering.
Anyway, I've installed the Outlook plugin and will be rebooting (!@#$@ W2K) soon to give it a spin.
10:15:01 PM 
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