Elephant Grass for Gmail:Bitcoin-powered spam control
Lessons Learned
Jesse Powellco-founder/CEO @ Kraken@jespowjesse@kraken.com
https://github.com/timbowhite/elephant-grass-gmail

Problem: Targeted Spam
From: Asshat Recruiter
Subject: Wednesday 3pm?
Body:Hey, Jesse. I noticed Kraken is hiring devs so I’d liketo waste your time on Wednesday at 3pm. Cool?
Sincerely,
AsshatSolution: Make Them Pay
Whitelist Contacts
Charge everyone else 0.0005 bitcoin
If sender is not in Contacts, filter message topayment-pending folder, auto respond with payment
request. If payment received, move to paymentcomplete.
Requirement: No 3rd party access to my mail

People Were Outraged
From: Jamie Zawinski
Subject: Re: upcoming DNA Lounge
eventsBody:
You must be THIS TALL to use email.
You are a pinhead. Get off the internet.

People Were Outraged
That sounds a lot like YOUR PROBLEM which you
are trying to make be MY PROBLEM.
I'm sorry that dealing with spam filters is too hardfor you without trying to shift the cost onto literally
everyone else. Maybe you should consider notusing computers.
What you are doing has been widelyacknowledged as both an asshole move andcompletely ineffective for literally decades:
http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/challengeresponse.html

Challenge-Response Anti-Spam
Systems Considered Harmful
0. Weak, and trivially abused, verification basis.
1. Mistaken interpretation of anti-spam goals
2. Misplaced burden.
3. Privacy violation.
4. Less effective at greater burden than receiverside whitelisting.
5. High type II error (beta).

Challenge-Response Anti-Spam
Systems Considered Harmful
6. Potential "Joe-job" denial of service.
7. C-R - C-R deadlock
8. Potential integration into spam email harvest systems.
9. Likely consequences: C-R messages and users
blacklisted or spamfiltered
10. Mailing list burden.
11. Fails to address techno-economic underpinnings ofspam.

Results
Error Message Count
Service using too much computer time for one day 320
We're sorry, a server error occurred. Please wait a bit and try again. 1

Details:

Start Function Error Message Trigger End
12/3/15 9:18 PM processInboxCheckPayments Service using too much computer
time for one day time-based 12/3/15 9:18 PM

Results
More spam than ever
• Likely got my own email address blacklisted• Now instead of looking through my spam
folder, I look through payment-pending, andit’s worse than spam ever was.
• Elephant Grass still useful for filtering Gmail
on Contacts (not possible natively).
•Fun StuffHey!
I would like to tell you that Ashley Madison was recently hacked, and now I have
all the information about your online affairs and even the cheatings you did
I have located all your social networking and dating website profiles, and using
this I am going to send message to all of your friends and family members aboutthis.
Well, for sure, you would feel ashamed if I tell your family members and friends
about this, and it would be even more worse, when you meet them face to face.
Wondering how to prevent me from doing this? Its simple, you need to send just 1
Bitcoin (i.e One BTC) to the following Bitcoin address:
1BXgGTQdNfPp9LtUr895VFqu8WVTtkmNvh

Next Steps
Need cooperation of mail service providers• Need wallet browser plugin to makemicropayment faster/automatic (for otherpurposes too)••

Need new email address

Elephant Grass for Gmail:Bitcoin-powered spam control
Lessons Learned
Jesse Powellco-founder/CEO @ Kraken@jespowjesse@kraken.com
https://github.com/timbowhite/elephant-grass-gmail