[Asrg] POSTAGE, was The fundamental misconception about paying for mail

[Barry Shein]

On December 1, 2008 at 14:27 johnl at taugh.com (John Levine) wrote:
 > >} coffee. But 98% of the cash that customers offer is counterfeit. How
 > >} would this affect the way that cashiers work? Would they just accept
 > >} all the cash and figure they'll call the cops when they find bogus
 > >} stuff?
 > >
 > >I suspect they'd make everyone pay in advance so they have time to
 > >confirm the cash is real, and then only provide service to those who
 > >have an account in good standing.  Then it may turn into a problem
 > >with identity theft, but that doesn't hit their bottom line.
 > 
 > Then 98% pay with fake versions of whatever it is that they give you
 > to say that you have an account.  Same problem.  This isn't a perfect
 > analogy, since at a donut store you rarely have 1000 people
 > simultaneously at 1000 counters trying to buy a donut with the same
 > card that has only 50 cents on it.

I will say that, having worked and grown up in retail, people who pass
phony bills try to find very busy cashiers to pass them thru.

A big problem at Coney Island food stands and similar, which can get
impossibly busy, were people who'd cut the corners off a $20 bill and
paste them onto a $1 bill. The $20 is still good (hand it in at the
bank, rule is usually >50% then ok), and the $1 gets accepted by the
busy cashier as a $20. And no print counterfeiting involved! Any idiot
with scissors and glue can try it tho I think it's as serious a crime
as any counterfeiting, or more serious than most people would call fun
anyhow.

And on and on. All kinds of con games, slight of hand, I could teach
you a few which really work but even better with a busy cashier.

But cryptography gives us a potentially 100% (ok, 99. with a lot of
9s%) certain identification of phony "bills", much like even an
average bill scanning machine would never be fooled by those clipped
corners, and a pretty good one can spot most any phony.

 > >} ... if your wonderful system rejects their fake stamps with 99%
 > >} accuracy, they try 100 times as often ...
 > 
 > >....  Let through unchecked anyone with a history of payment and
 > >throttle everyone else (to the point of quarantine without final
 > >delivery, if necessary) until you know their history.
 > 
 > That's what Turntide does, except for "history of wanted mail."
 > Why would "history of paying" be better?

I wouldn't use any "history of paying".

I would expect "history of fraud" to be of interest, particularly if
positive ID were required a la DKIM or similar.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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