Wikipedia -- Caveat Emptor

There are lots of web reference tools out there, from Onelook to Google to Slashdot and many, many others. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with a major twist: Anyone can add to it, and anyone can edit the contents. There is no editorial board. There is no real editing, except that anyone can "edit." Wikipedia even describes itself using its own format -- anyone can edit the entry on Wikipedia!

The theory of Wikipedia is interesting to me, but to my mind the results are extremely uneven. "Editors" with one ax to grind or another modify entries to fit their point of view, which sometime errupt in edit wars. I looked up "Dog" in Wikipedia, thinking it to be a relatively benign subject. Yet, despite the fact that the day is young, there are fourteen edits to the content, some of which were "reverts" back to earlier versions, meaning that someone erased what someone else entered!

To Uncle Mark's mind, a medium in which anyone can contribute with no real fact checking is to be taken with a ton of salt. So, while Wikipedia is good for a quick lookup for obviously true data (like the US is in North America -- no controversy there!), caveat emptor!

Yahoo and AOL to Start Charging Senders for Email

Slashdot.org posted a notice today that aol was going to start charging emailers to email people using their service -- and that "Opposition is growing." Uncle Mark was intrigued by this. What is this?

Well, it turns out that AOL and Yahoo have turned to a company called Goodmail Systems to provide email certification services for them. AOL and Yahoo will accept "certified email" from Goodmail and allow it to go direct to their users' inboxes, bypassing spam filters. Senders who are certified by Goodmail pay a fee for each email sent.

Now -- when I read this, I thought "oh, great! AOL and Yahoo are allowing spammers to spam me, and collecting money for it!"

And, guess what? There is plenty of opposition to this. There is a web site called "Deal AOL." There is the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) take on this. There is MoveOn.org's take on this. Why?

The leading claims against this are:

1. This would create a "two tiered" email system where some email is free and some is paid for. The paid for mail would therefore get preferential treatment, leaving small companies and people who do not want to pay for sending email out in the cold.

2. AOL and Yahoo would profit from spam, since they are collecting fees for emails to their user base.

3. It would remove financial incentives for AOL or Yahoo to fight spam -- they would just let spammers "pay to play." [Uncle Mark is adding: If anything, it would incent AOL and Yahoo to force all senders, not just spammers, to use their certification system, and block all non-paying emails].

Goodmail says that they do the following to certify senders:

1. Ensure the company is legitimate and has been in business for a while.
2. Ensure that the senders infrastructure is stable, and has been working for a while (this means that the infrastructure has a history of sending emails).
3. Ensure that the sender is a "responsible emailer" according to their and certified receivers' criteria.

In addition, Goodmail says that people who have email boxes on AOL or Yahoo must "opt in," or agree to receive certified email.

Given this, it became clear that this is not what detracters are saying it is, which is an email "tax." However, it is obviously a fee-based system which does add on a charge per email.

So, what is Uncle Mark's take on this?

I am not against it. I also think that this will die on the vine.

Here's the deal: We need, badly, email authentication. We need to have a system in place that certifies to you that the sender of an emailer is really who he or she says they are. This something that has been on my mind for many, many years, and the problem has gotten worse.

Basically, you have no idea, really, that an email from "Aunt Myrtle" is really from Aunt Myrtle, or is a "spoofed" email. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can make their email program say that they are sending emails from "george@whitehouse.gov." This is, frankly, insane, and reflects the openness of the internet, as well as the good intentions of the guys that built it. So we have the following problems:

1. "Phishing" in which people send you emails claiming to be from a bank, or PayPal, or some other service, with the intention of stealing your money or identity. This is a real problem.
2. Viruses that send copies of itself while claiming to be from someone else.
3. Internet scammers can claim to be anyone they want to be.

And there are others. People spend a ton of money on filtering "spam" and viruses from emails. Why? Because we have no real idea where the email came from. Spam filters and services can do quite a bit to filter this out -- you are spending money to do this, it is NOT free.

Let's say we have this world: I am Mark Patterson, Uncle Mark. I have certified to the government or to some authentication agency that I am really Mark Patterson, and they checked my ID, and they confirm that I am indeed Mark Patterson. They issue me an "email passport" that says that email sent from me really came from me, and no one else. Now let's say that everyone does this: Everyone applies for an "Email Passport."

Now, let's say that someone with an email passport emails me. I now know who they are, because I see they have a passport, and I trust the agency that issued it. So, Aunt Myrtle emails me, and I can see that it really is her.

What does that do?

1. Phisher's can no longer claim to be from a bank, because they do not have the bank's passport.
2. Spammer's can no longer spam with impugnity, because you can block all emails with their passport.
3. Viruses are limited in their effectiveness. You can still get a virus sent, but you will know where it came from, unlike now.

Basically, you now who is sending you email. If an email comes in that does not have a passport, that email is immediately suspect. You will know, however, that it is not a bank if is claiming to be one, because it does not have the bank's passport.

So why not just have an email passport?

Well, the main reason is that there are conflicting standards for email authentication, and there is no consensus. Microsoft is pusing a technology called "Sender ID", and Yahoo and others are pushing "Domain Keys," and then there is the "Sender Policy Framework." That's just three. This is something that needs to be a single standard, like email in general is.

So, it looks like AOL and Yahoo are cutting the Gordian Knot and saying "Heck with it! You gotta pay to reach our users!"

So, why will this "pay to play" scheme die on the vine?

1. The end user must "opt in" to receive it. Would you opt in to get paid-for advertising?
2. The sender must pay to send each email. Would you, as a company, pay to send anything but revenue-generating advertisements?
3. If Yahoo or AOL play the hand to heavily, and force people to get these emails, people will use other email services, or filter out these emails on their own. This removes the economic incentive of the senders.
4. If Yahoo or AOL neglect their spam and virus filters, users will leave.
5. Banks and other companies that want to ensure their emails are certified will certain use other means than a "pay per email" service. They will adopt an email authentication service, or all of them.

In addition to the above, that larger issue is that Internet services "want to be free." What that means is that once you have a connection to the internet, it is really, really easy to communicate with other people on the internet, and all forms of this communication therefore can be cheap to build and use. AOL's IM and Yahoo Messenger are free. If they started charging real money for it, something else would come along and do the same thing cheaper. Email is really, really cheap. If someone starts charging money for it, it is really, really cheap to go somewhere else. Voice over IP and internet phone calls are really, really cheap. If someone starts to charge big cash to make an internet phone call, you can go somewhere else -- even use IM or Yahoo Messenger. [This is why Uncle Mark was so flabbergasted when eBay spent so much money for internet calling vendor "Skype." You can do this for nothing! If you know even a bit about programming, you can write your own internet phone!]

So -- mark me -- this will start off, and then in about a year, it will be a non-issue. AOL and Yahoo may still use it, but my guess is that it will be very low volume. It certainly will not replace email, or, unfortunately, get rid of spam.

Almost a Year!

Well, it is almost a year since Ask Uncle Mark took to the blogosphere! I admit, it has been sporadic, but at least in doing it I've learned a few things. I hope you have, too.

Some of my lessons learned are:

1. It's funny how when you tell people that you will answer their technical questions in a 'blog how fast the questions dry up! One of the original purposes of this 'blog was to allow one answer to address a number of questions -- if one person has a question, the idea was that so do others. I did not anticipate the number of technical questions to decline!
2. I do not have to be the writer of all content. There are others who have written eloquently on technical subjects, and many times it is more expedient to link to their information -- the beauty of the web.
3. It takes time to do something like this! When I post an answer, I want to ensure it is correct. It turns out that this "fact checking," as we in the journalism trade calls it, is an involved process.

So, I've decided to shift the focus a bit for Ask Uncle Mark to be less of a "Dear Abby" to more of an internet "Guide to the Inside." Sort of a specialist in "Endotechnology." There is so much technical information, news items, and just plain data flying around that it is extremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. For example, some alarming technical information is just sensationalism, and some, like Sony's "root kit" fiasco, is truly evil. I broke the story to the non-technical world here, on Ask Uncle Mark (I got it from slashdot.org, the site for "News for Nerds."). The Sony Rootkit ended up on the list of one of the biggest gaffs of the year on several technical media outlets, and cost Sony a bundle.

The field of technology has gotten so vast that there is truly no way one person can report on the whole of it. There are, for example, computer specialists in the field of supercomputers that never touch Microsoft-run PCs or Apple Macs. There are Apple Mac afficianados who would die of mortification if they ever had to use a PC. And, there are the True Believers of the Microsoft/Gates Vision of the Future. But, those are the obvious divisions -- there are more. There is a magazine called "Computer Power User" that gets into the guts of the new PCs that are out, and is geared to computer gamers. These guys have a totally different take on computers than the casual web cruiser. They want maximum power from their computers, even to the point of forcing the computer chips to perform outside of specification (called "overclocking") and then cooling their super-charged computer chips with watercooled -- yes, really watercooled -- heat dissipators. This is a whole new realm of information.

During the year, I made a few informational posts in addition to the educational posts. Going forward, I will be posting interesting technology stories and experiences with technology as they happen, and adding some insight into them, again, with an eye to the non-technical reader. There are a ton of resources for the technically minded which are incomprehensible to the "lay person," but which are nontheless important to know about. Uncle Mark will post some of the more interesting and let you know why you should care.

So, welcome to The Guide to the Inside -- Ask Uncle Mark.