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Re: [Asrg] The Solution To Spam - The First Response

2003-07-05 07:44:39
From: "Walter Dnes" <waltdnes(_at_)waltdnes(_dot_)org>
If you could find out all SMTP servers with a good reputation, you
could arrange to verify them by looking up, say,
63.10.45.12.presumedinnocent.org.

  This seems to be a mirror image of current DNSbls which list bad
actors.  I think the current approach is better.  There are, hopefully,
fewer "bad guys" than "good guys" so the logistics of listing the "bad
guys" are easier.

But it is critical that this NOT apply to new/unknown servers and
it would be subject to easy revocation.

  Everybody starts off presumed innocent until listed in a DNSbl, which
takes care of your worry about new/unknown servers.

That's rather the opposite of what I meant.  It is necessary that new and 
unknown
servers be presumed guilty.   That's one of the main problems with blacklists.

There are thousands of new open relays and open proxies created each week.  A 
virus
could create hundreds of thousands in a day.  Blacklists can't cope with that.

I am only proposing this reputation-based whitelist as an aid to transition.  
Once
mail is no longer accepted from unknown servers, there would be no way to build 
a
good reputation.

Searching on "reputation" and various mail-related terms, I discovered
http://www.mxes.org/. Tracking of reputation could be very helpful to heuristic
systems like SpamAssassin, but the n-squared nature of mail connections make it
unlikely that it would work very well.





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