Re:My proposal for a distributed social networking protocol
by theli0nheart on Saturday May 08, 2010 @03:36PM
(#1330775)
What if a dynamic salt were added to the hash, i.e. instead of just email, it were email+first_name? I think that would solve most of the email harvesting issues that have been brought up.
(note that a partial email validity oracle isn't necessarily a deal killer; PGP/GPG keyservers, for example, are partial email validity oracles, and have not only existed for years but have also gained acceptance amongst (some of) the security conscious and the paranoid)
(also note that a hash would be a safeguard (whose effectiveness is dependent on how resistant the hash function is to first preimage attacks and other factors) against disclosure following a compromise of the central database/authority, in addition to its questionable utility at fighting spam in normal situations)