ietf-asrg
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Asrg] HTML-burdened E-mail

2003-06-20 08:31:30
At 02:39 AM 6/20/2003 -0500, gep2(_at_)terabites(_dot_)com wrote:

>> WHOSE SUPPOSED RIGHTS ARE YOU TRYING TO PROTECT HERE, ANYHOW?

> The users, as stated in the charter (emphasis added):

> "The work of the ASRG will also include investigating techniques to
>evaluate the usefulness and cost of proposed solutions. Usefulness is
>described by the effectiveness, accuracy, and incentive structure of the
>system. The cost of the system refers to the burden imposed on USERS and
>operators of the communications system. "

>>I think it makes sense to put priority rights to those who are paying the
>>bills... and that's the recipients.  They should have the power to turn
>>off such
>>bulky and unwanted crap, ESPECIALLY given the fact that they typically are
>>trying to work around limited-size ISP-provided inboxes and to keep them from
>>overflowing and bouncing the mail they DO want to receive.

> Your underlying assumption is that spam will persist being HTML encoded.

No. I think that INITIALLY, spam is going to stay HTML-burdened (and a result,
nearly all of it would be trashed if sent to permission-list-protected
recipients). After some time, spammers will realize that HTML-burdening their
spam is the 'kiss of death' and they'll stop doing that.

> I do not believe that it will take spammers too long to switch to plain ASCII.

Agreed.  And once they do that:

I believe someone on the list has stated that spammers are monitoring the working group and in the last 60 days there have been significant changes in spam based on our discussions here. When I mean that they will switch to plain ASCII, I was not talking about on the order of years, rather DAYS or WEEKS. By the time you can implement base64 blocking, spammers will already be using plain ASCII. All you will do is irritate lots of users.

   1)  Their spam will be less effective;

How?

   2)  their spam will be more easily dealt with by content filters;

How? Spammers send HTML encoded mail on the assumption that the MUAs are able to parse it. What is easier to do: make content filters be able to parse everything MUAs can, or block HTML encoded mail over the Internet completely. I believe the first one is easier since there are few companies that make filters many of which already able to parse and process base64, HTML, etc.

3) their spam will be something like a QUARTER or less of the volume it is
today, reducing both bandwidth and storage costs all along the delivery route.

Agreed somewhat.

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg