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RE: [asrg] 6. proposal of solution: Using Relay Honeypots to Reduce Spam

2003-04-17 07:48:27
From: "Tom Thomson" <tthomson(_at_)neosinteractive(_dot_)com>

An anti-spam system should only be measured on how it defends the
mailboxes of those who choose to use it.  It is wrong to penalize
a system for what it doesn't do for people who don't participate.
We should instead evaluate anti-spam systems on how they deal with
spam addressed to participants in the system.

...
                                   ...  Are there any other broad classes of
techniques that will score higher if your propsal is followed instead of
looking for a reduction of the amount of spam in the network? Anything done
by sending ISPs clearly won't, since it will reduce spam for everyone.

No, something that reduces spam for everyone by 80% reduces spam for
each individual by 80%.  It is only when you do as the other person
advocates and penalize systems that don't reduce all spam in all of
the network that you can reach your conclusion.

The users of ISPs that do something are participants in the anti-spam
system of those ISPs.  The effectiveness of their system is based on
how much their spam is reduced by 80%.  How the rest of the Internet
is affected is secondary.

                         ...  So if your proposed change in the measure of
success is sensible, we might as well all pack up and go home after writing
a short reccomendation to the effect "carry on as at present - tell everyone
to make more use of existing receiver side filtering techniques and don't
waste your time trying to reduce the volume of spam being transmitted".
Personally I don't think that's a good idea.

No, I am saying that two mechanisms that reduce spam for participants
equally are equivalently effective.  Whether spam is also reduced for
non-participants is at most a secondary consideration.

Another reason to focus on the mailboxes of participants in a system is
that parts of the Internet should be free to have as much spam as they
want.  It would be wrong to interfere in the delivery of unsolicited bulk
email or whatever you define as spam in those parts of the network where
the contracts between users and ISPs allow or require lots of spam.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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