More on Spam: Richi's Rationale

Yesterday I told you about my encounter with Richi Jennings abut spam, bouncing back mail, and challenge/response tools.

Richi has good arguments for not using either challenge/response or, say, MailWasher's spam bouncing feature, and he discusses them on his blog.

I followed all of the links on Richi's blog and one lively debate caught my eye. It's between Richi and Jeff Hendrickson, the developer of Em@ilCRX, and it drills down into the challenge/response hassle. Take a look at his program if you're trying to decide whether to use a challenge/response approach.

Jeff Hendrickson's Em@ilCRX blocking e-mail by country

Challenge/Response? Not for Me

The truth is that my ISP, EarthLink, has a decent challenge/response tool and I've wanted to try EarthLink's for years. My rationale was that if I entered everyone in my address book on EarthLink's whitelist, only spammers -- and people I didn't know -- would have the door slammed shut.

EarthLink has a built-in challenge/response tool

I decided not to try it for two reasons. The first was technical: Eudora does a terrible job of exporting its address book and EarthLink does an equally poor job of importing Eudora address books.

The other issue for not using challenge/response is pragmatic: It doesn't work. I'll give you an example. A PC World reader sends me an e-mail and I take a couple of minutes to respond. Then I get an e-mail challenging me, asking me to take an extra step -- click here, go to a Web site, or maybe stand in the corner and whistle a show tune.

Nope, not me, Pal. I've already been a good Netizen and responded to the reader's e-mail; and I'm not about to spend more time on this. If the person sending me the e-mail had a spark or two, they'd have added me to their whitelist before sending me a message.

So I watched how I responded to getting a challenge e-mail, figured everyone else would do the same thing, and decided not to bother with it.

I'm wondering what your take is on challenge/response, Richi's plea, and maybe even Jeff Hendrickson's counterargument. Let me know in Comments.