One significant difference in a pull infrastructure is feedback.
In the current SMTP 'push' model, the sender has no indication of
whether a message was read or discarded.
In a 'pull' model, the sender knows that the message was refused,
because it was never picked up.
Yes. this is an huge advantage to legitimate senders.
currently "bounced" messages are virtually useless.
To me this raises some interesting questions.
1) Will a spammer stop trying to send spam to a domain that always
refuses his spam? (negative feedback)
possibly why continue if it is never going to arrive
currently spammers simply ignore such bounces(IMHO).
2) Does this feedback help the spammer (i.e. reformat spam if he
suspects Bayes caught it...) (informative property of feedback)
I have considered the possibility. that is why I believe this sort of system
or any other can only work in conjunction with a legislative approach.
But in my variation of pull the deny message would be very limited i.e.
1/ no classification header - should be fixed (an honest error?)
2/ unacceptable origin - gives the sender the chance to find out why.
perhaps they have been incorrectly blacklisted.
3/ no such mailbox exists - delete the recipient from your list they have
moved on
4/ unacceptable classification - the mail falls into the recipients "don't
accept" category
With the latter the sender may choose to falsify the classification. this is
where legislation must step in.
3) How long must my server hold mail for you to pick it up? (balance of
burdens)
Because in my pull variation the decision to accept or deny is host server
based (not pop3) the decision should be forthcoming within moments.
under normal systems a timeout period applies for undeliverable mail
I can see no reason for this to change
remember it doesn't have to wait till the recipient logs on to get his mail
(which could be weeks/months)
Also the burden of storage is shifted from the recipient to the sender
in the case of a bulk mailing this is much more efficient
only one copy requires to be maintained when there may be many thousands of
recipients
in the case of personalised mailouts the mail could be generated when the
accept is received
this would also be a saving of resources for the sender
and as a sender of bulk mail I sometimes get bounces as "users mailbox is
full"
I often wonder whether their box is just full of spam / virii or simply
abandoned
with less accepted spam this is less likeley to occur
Regards
Chris
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