ietf-asrg
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [Asrg] Grouped reply on permissions lists

2003-06-22 20:28:47
From: Yakov Shafranovich <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>

...
Agreed but the very nature of spam has nothing to do with HTML tricks - it 
has to do with "how spammers amplify their distribution channels while 
keeping costs nearly at zero" in Barry Shain's words.

You keep saying variations on that but I think they are wrong.
Spam itself may have nothing to do with HTML tricks, but the spam
problem does.  The spam problem involves junk in our mailboxes,
and HTML is the most important tool of spammers trying to get their
stuff into our mailboxes past our mechanical and manual filters.

Do you use an HTML-enabled mailer?  I bet you do, because you would
otherwise not be so cavalier about the games spammers play with HTML.
HTML-enabled mailers make spam look far more presentable.  Even many
spammers would be too ashamed to send it if they could see how bad it
looks.  Without HTML to hide the up to 99.9% of noise added to the
real text to try to evade filters, it would look fraudulent to everyone.


I think that we had plenty of arguments both ways, and both camps are 
staying were they are. I would suggest that either you or someone else, 
write up a BCP or RFC, plus create some working code and get back to the 
group. Not that I am advocating the banning of HTML, but there are plenty 
of people that are and it is important to get stuff past theory into 
practical useable code.

The working code already exists and is wide use.  I think other
people have said that standard SpamAssassin penalized mail in HTML.
It's trivial to write a Procmail recipe that rejects HTML mail or
to modify a recipe that rejects by character sets named in SMTP or
MIME entity headers to reject "text/html".

If HTML issue is dropped, will you promise to be try as hard to squelch
talk of even more hopeless efforts?  Getting Microsoft to turn on HTML
in Outlook only when the user asks for formatting seems more promising
than getting Microsoft to add CR support to Outlook or changing the
terms and conditions for the use of Hotmail to prohibit sending from
any except Hotmail SMTP clients and so make RMX meaningful.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com

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