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RE: [Asrg] Introduction and another idea

2003-06-19 16:03:30
From: gep2(_at_)terabites(_dot_)com

...
Specifically, people willing to send plain ASCII text without encoding or 
attachments (and without any HTML tags) would have their messages (by default, 
at least) go through without any problems at all.  This would enable those 
wishing to receive unsolicited messages (say, from consumers of a company's 
products, or from prospective new clients for my consulting services) to do so 
without any problems.

HTML, attachments, and encoded text HUGELY magnify not just the bulk and 
bandwidth of E-mail, but also create VASTLY increased risk and opportunity for 
obscuring mail content, malicious code, and other fraud and deception.  These 
features are simply not needed in basic E-mail (and that should include ALL 
unsolicited E-mail).  

That's a very good way to make point.

People sendng strangers any sort of unsolicited email that involves
anything except plaintext ASCII are demonstrating either a severe lack
of clues or politeness or that the languages they share with the
recipient do not include any European languages.  For obligate English
speakers, either can be a good reason to discard mail unread.

(Note the "can be a good reason."  It won't be a good reason for
some situations.)


Therefore, it makes sense in the "whitelist" to specify SPECIAL PRIVILEGES 
that 
are granted by a recipient to familiar, trusted, and justified senders of 
those 
kinds of costlier, riskier E-mail.  Those untrusted/unknown/unfamiliar senders 
who [ab]use these features without prearrangement to do that ought to find 
their 
E-mail bounced or even just simply discarded.

Yes!

(Could you adjust your line length to less than 78?  My ancient MUA
doesn't rewrap lines, and I think it shouldn't.  I control my own line 
lengths by piping paragraphs through `fmt` as I edit them with `vi`.)


...
One nice thing about what I propose is that it can be implemented at the 
recipient ISP ...

Yes, but until ISPs can tell users who complain "run the Netscape or
Microsoft auto-update mechanism", they will not and cannot do such
filtering by default.

    ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]


] From: gep2(_at_)terabites(_dot_)com

] ...
] > Someone earlier suggested that free DNS systems such as dyndns.org would 
] provide RMX functionality for such cases.
]
] Yes, but as I understand it they won't do much if anything for those of us 
who 
] are still behind NAT and router, since domain names mapping to a nonroutable 
] 192.168.n.n address seem pretty pointless... am I wrong?  :-)

I'm sorry, but you are wrong.  Today "NAT" boxes usually include port
mapping.  You configure such a box to rewrite and forward incoming
packets for TCP port 25 to some port at one of your RFC 1918 addresses.
NAT is a great evil, but it can be made to handle a few cases including
FTP and SMTP servers.

The only significant problems with using an SMTP server behind a NAT
box on a dynamic IP address are that:

  - dynamic DNS does not work very well when your address not only
     can change but does change and if your definition of "work
     very well" is what might be called "professional grade"

  - your dynamic IP address is likely to be ratted out to blacklists
     of dynamic address by its reverse DNS name or your ISP.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com

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