I don't think it's a bummer that they patented it. In October of 2037 (assuming they received it today), it will be available for the whole world to use. Until then, it will still be available for the whole world to use, just for a small licensing fee. In the mean time alternatives can also be developed.

This technique could have been invented and promoted starting in 1997 (20 years ago) but only through the protectionism of the patent regime do you have this beautiful write-up and promotion of it by researchers pushing it forward: it's the patent regime working in action.

It works EVEN WITH WEAK PASSWORDS. That is pretty amazing if you ask me.

I am glad they patented it and are promoting it.

"But wait, it's so simple".

Let me give you an example of a $684.23B company that you've heard of that is making a mistake in security that even a small child could detect and correct, but for which there is no proprietary solution in the space pushing them forward.

The company is Google and their silly security mistake is that when I give out "jsmith543+weeklytechupdate@gmail.com" where my true address is jsmith543@gmail.com, and I'm signing up for the Weekly Tech Update newsletter but I'm afraid they could start spamming me, or sell my address for any number of third parties to start spamming me, then this allows the creation of a gmail inbox that tags the incoming mail with "weeklytechupdate". Pretty clever. Only the issue is that it is possible to strip the +____ and spammers actually do that. Here are examples of HN people saying they actually do that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15396446

>I’ve run a fair amount of email campaigns where we strip out the + if gmail is the domain to ensure it doesn’t end up in some weird filter.

The solution is extremely simple. Allow me to specify a key-value pair from the GMail interface that generates a high-entropy key, and pairs it to a value I choose.
Deliver all address to that key to my inbox, tagged with the value I chose, until I start marking it as spam.
Very easy. Example: I go to gmail, I click "generate rescindable read address address", I am given affj3fjd and I assign it "weeklytechupdate". I see that affj3fjd@gmail.com gets assigned to weeklytechupdate and if I need to give my email address to that web site in the future I can always look it up in some list. Easy. Gmail doesn't do it, and its spam solution is broken.

The only thing is: nobody has come up with something clever enough to patent in this space, and then promote the @#$# out of. If they had, I could give my email addresses out in confidence to whoever I want.

Actually I made a full gmail email address dedicated only for spam. The problem is I can NEVER read the stuff that goes there as I just don't even look. I just looked. The last piece of spam that I got delivered to it occurred 7 days ago. There are just 2 pieces of mail in my inbox.

That means Google's spam filter is very, very, very good. Wait, what? So good that it silently filters spam that I expect to get, that I explicitly give out my email address for? (Okay, I just looked, and there are 2 messages from 4 days ago - nothing more recent - in the "promotions" tab).

No. It's not what it means. It means that some of these sites I give my address out to aren't able to email me at all. They're just not getting through, because GMail's spam fiters are too draconian.

When I give out "jsmith543+weeklytechupdate@gmail.com" I expect ALL of the mail sent to there to go through - not to be caught by the spam filter. Instead, presumably what happens is gmail throws away most mail that isn't sent to an individual by an individual.

Sorry to rant on this aside, I just wanted to show, in action, the difference between a patented solution that a company promotes, versus an EASY solution that would WORK, that GMail doesn't do. It actively does something broken. Nobody has come up with and promotes some fancy solution that works, so instead they don't use the weak solution that works; they use nothing, only a broken non-working security through obscurity solution that you can see HN'ers actively strip out in order to be able to spam effectively.

And this is Google. So this is a question as clear as day for why I don't mind patented novel algorithms with companies behind them licensing and promoting them. I kind of mind when it's a race to the patent office with new technology, but grandparent poster's technique is one that could have been done in 1997 so I don't really buy that excuse. I like that they're patenting it and promoting it. It's a good way to get companies to use better solutions. Companies just don't do it by themselves, as my Google example shows.