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Re: [Asrg] New proposal for spam blocking: Greylisting

2003-06-21 12:04:58
At 10:49 PM -0600 6/20/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
I saw some comments about available counter-attacks by spammers, but
I don't recall seeing a clear description of the easiest.  Spammers
do not need to do real queuing to get though a greylist.  They need
only send to the same target list from the same SMTP client a few
hours after an initial spew.  Mailboxes protected by a greylist will
accept the second copy.  Other mailboxes will see two copies.  That
wouldn't be remarkable, because some spammers are already hitting
individual addresses with several copies per spew.

I agree. In fact, I think this makes greylisting a very bad idea. It magnifies the tragedy of the commons. Everyone tries to protect themselves and ends up making the problem worse for everyone else. In the short term it works well for individuals. As soon as it becomes popular, it doubles the spam traffic and solves nothing.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/          Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.

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