ietf-asrg
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Re: [Asrg] We got some stinging criticism

2004-05-12 18:22:49
The Internet community was told spam was beneath the IETF for eight
years, then we were told that it was a long term research problem and
only after SPF or CallerID looked like succeeding without IETF
endorsement did anything happen.

You appear to think that someone is going to be able to impose
something like SPF or its ilk.  The closest you'll get to this is some
cabal like AOL/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc refusing to talk with anyone who
doesn't - in which case I for one will be quite firmly on the "doesn't"
side; A/M/Y/etc bring a fairly large negative value to my mailbox and I
would love it if they would go away.

SPF won't stop spam.  CallerID won't stop spam.  All they'll do is make
it a little more traceable, right back to the zombie which handed the
message to its outgoing smarthost - basically what we already have now.
It will put a dent in it briefly, which will be trumpeted as a great
success, a dent which will last just long enough for spamware authors
to update their products to send to smarthost instead of direct to
target MX; new code will roll out and it will be business as usual.

Nothing but action by the providers hosting the zombie armies will stop
spam, and probably even that won't truly _stop_ spam (though if the
large providers were to somehow miraculously get a collective clue and
take effective action, they could reduce it to tolerable levels).

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