[Asrg] 2.c.1 and 6 - The importance of being Earnest
2003-04-10 03:24:09
At last some with the knowledge of internet tries to handle spam, not a day
to late.
But as a start, since (as one participant said in one posting: the mail list
already seem to look like a Usenet group ;-), am. english nor real english
is not my native language, so do not start a flame-war, if I write something
you feel is wrong. Try first to interpret, if I am really saying, what you
think I am saying. I might not, but just use the words a bit awkward. Then
flame.
Vernon Schryver wrote some days earlier:
.........
In addition, because almost all spam is about advertising, very few
spammers are shy about critical aspects of their identities.
........................................
We don't need any changes for "source identification." The source
that matters is the organization whose name, products, or services
are advertised by spam. As demonstrated with the TCPA at least in
.......
and it caught my eye. As most of you, I have received spam since Spamford's
time and managed Internet mail since before Europe got IP. But no real
problems until Feb. 15 last year. I found my culprit, www.addresses.com,
"the one and only address service on the net". All my addresses, also those
from my first UUCP account around -87, was there. All then readable domain
for domain, with wildcards. They have done some boxing in since then, but
the damage is done.
I have looked through net articles/pages around spam and now this work group
for help. My old ISP:s blacklists install did not work (had to change
addresses in the end) and my own filter did at first not to good.
But I found something out in the process, that Vernon seems to be the only
one other really noticing, that the spammers do tell us something that is
true.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, spammers have in the end a need "of being
Earnest". They can hide all that they want, but the contact information, the
URL:s and the phone numbers _need_ to be operational or readable. You can't
put in as many <!-- sdagksdgs dgsdfgk> in a URL, not if it shall be
clickable and you can't hide a phone number to much, if it shall remain
readable.
What has this to do with this work group?
Well, I kept one mail address for tests and to collect my filter's database
of sender addresses, IP-nos and else, some 5-6000 entries. But still 30 %
went through. When realizing the above 2 mothns ago, I redesigned my filter
to look for these URL's and phone numbers and shrunk my indata to ca 1500
entries, but it got far more effective. From ca 20 spam a day, to 1 (always
a completely new, due to spammers address trading). And all I am using a
simple, own procmail-like filter, just regex:ing the incoming mails for the
URL/phone nos. I suspect we have not seen the forest for all the trees.
Using "earnest" data, makes all filtering simpler, faster and more reliable.
I do not point at a complete solution, it needs more, but it might simplify
the technology. If done properly, a filter could combine the "earnest"
method with others, as baysian, as well as streaming filters, removing <!--
asdfkasdfj>-like passages first and do MIME/QP-filtering, as well as web
char decoding, cleaning up "fixed" spams, simplefying the end filtering.
Some of you will give criticism as :
1. they will change domains
2. they will change call center/phone no
3. they will yell about 1:st amendment
4. they will ...............
Well, you _are_ right, but if you read this winters articles about spammers,
in Slashdot and Wired, most spammers operate on a very tight economy. They
only need ca 50 answers to cash in, but they really need those 50. If they
need to spend more time and money on registering domains, contract call
centers, change phone nos, in the end it wouldn't pay.
And if less ads get through, the less interested is the advertisers in using
spam firms, if they do not get the result expected. In the end maybe only
100 spammers can afford to continue, but then with even more esoteric
domains, these also identifyable just by their improbability (remember,
we've hopefully have all their present domains/numbers in the databases).
The first amendment is a US issue, the rest of the 7 billion humans will
"care less", for most of our countries have other ad regulating laws, some
also prohibiting pure spam, as within EU. 1:st affects ca 20-30% of the
worlds email receivers today and even less in a year. The cartoon of the
native in the jungle, wanting to lend a portable to check his Hotmail isn't
that absurd anymore. 95% of the spammers is US-based and therefore break the
laws of many countries and can be filtered out without risk.
But spam is more a social issue, than a technical issue. This is people
living on the fringe of a social codex, the majority does not accept. This
group show at possible tech solutions, but it is not enough. So lets steal
some bandwidth and compare with a similar problematic, though well accepted,
tech solution to an other social problem:
When trying to handle social issues with pure technology the Anglos-Saxon
world (US/UK/AU...) have a tradition of using web content filters. It gives
some interesting effects. In my language region "sex" is "sex" but also the
number "six". Guess what happens when moral majority hits the web here :-).
That goes for a lot of expressions. I know of a global firm, having
implemented a content filter at an european daughter, after the daughter for
several years said: "we don't filter the web, but since the firewall will
log everything of security reasons, we handle it if we see misuse".
They had less problems than other firms, less than 0.5% misuse, but now they
have much more + another. A customer want to sue them, since the filter
labelled it's web as "sexual abusing", making the customer CEO raving mad.
In the end content filters don't work that good. Same with spam filters, as
seen in this mail list.
The the short moral is: we need to have a balance between function,
technology and need.
This means that a group as ASGR need to recognize both the need to stop
spammers, but also allow for those that have a legit need of sending bulk
mail (not mail lists, I concur with the person noting, "if on a maillist,
you approve of all mailings").
The bulk mailers, on their hand, need to rebuild their now lacking social
competence, by being earnest. But a total stop, whitout an alternative, will
lead to other continuing negative activeties, a possibility to a legit
usage, could steer them to acceptance of a working social codex, as they had
at the firm above.
The best would be if the work group could design a tool, capable of stopping
fake spams, forcing spammers from hiding, allowing for those showing who
they are, as with fax- or snail-mailer, maybe by force a usage of (from a
previous RFC I believe) ADV: as a marker in the Subject:-field. Then every
site or user could use do a relevant filtering, based on what they want.
Forget opt-in/opt-out and similar, it would never work in a global
perspective. I have seen enough global scheems blow up at my global
employer, because the guys designing the global solution never had been past
Marthas Wineyard.
What I would like to see from this group is a standard additions to
sendmail, qmail, postfix, pop and IMAP, capable of enforcing the above
mentioned functions, to make sound local strategies for handling advertising
in email. Then, if someone complains and they haven't upgraded their
environment, sorry, don't complain here. If someone complains to
Scandinavia, that someone here filters "to much", sorry, 1:st isn't valid,
we do have our own, as good, laws to follow.
Also if someone could grind out the web addresses and phone numbers from
stored spams, building a proper "earnest" filter database, so at least some
interested, can try to refine this track, while others continue to look at
baysian and challenge-responce solutions.
Regards / Kurt Magnusson
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