The nice thing about my approach... don't allow most users
(i.e. those users without a GENUINE, AGREED NEED) to send you
HTML-burdened mails (force the mail to plain ASCII text) and
similarly don't allow most users (other than those you've negotiated
with and approved in advance) to send you attachments (and open that
window, guardedly, for only a few trusted senders and a few specific
attachment types).
THEN, for the stuff that has gotten through (and where most of the
tricks for obscuring content have been denied to the sender), you
put it through a good content filter which will identify the stuff
as spam if it looks like spam.
There don't seem to be any such content filters that are good enough
now;
No, largely because HTML and text-as-image (enabled by HTML!) create
difficulties for content filters.
...requiring them as part of your solution doesn't make your
solution any more viable.
They work TOGETHER. Is that so hard to understand?
My scheme virtually eliminates spams and worms being sent
successfully (to ME at least) in E-mails,
"virtually"? How do they ever get through?
Oh, theoretically, you MIGHT get an executable attachment from some worm which
happens (against all odds) to forge (or infect!) an E-mail address that you've
actually allowed to send you executable attachments. I agree that it's very
unlikely (and, if you don't allow ANY E-mail addresses to send you executable
attachments... which will be true for most users... it's essentially
impossible.)
Making that first filtering of the HTML junk happen also greatly
increases the effectiveness of the content filtering of what's left,
since there are very many fewer tricks left available to spammers
and abusers for obscuring the true content of their unwanted
messages.
When it's necessary, they'll find more, just like they always have.
Perhaps, but that doesn't preclude the creation of corresponding new
"permissions" required to send that type of stuff, if it's happening through
E-mail.
The point is that you create a MUCH smaller (and much better defended!) target
for spammers, that is VERY much harder to hit.
I'm not promising that spammers won't find some other way to annoy people, and
that to some degree we're not still going to play on ongoing game of "whack a
mole". But at least my approach will make it a MUCH harder game for them to
play, on several different levels, and will do so by a scheme that it's VERY
difficult for them to force their way through from the outside.
Gordon Peterson http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections! http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.
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