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Re: [Asrg] Please critique my anti-spam system

2005-01-05 14:46:52
As I stated in my previous message, I have updated my website in response
to the major initial criticisms.  Your criticism refers to the bounces causing
a theoretical doubling of email traffic upon universal adoption of my system.
I include my solution to this issue below, excerpted from the critique portion
of my website:

"Email service providers will continue their practice of blocking the bulk of 
email that is suspected
of being spam even before it is accepted.  Bounces are never sent to this vast 
amount of probable
spam that is rejected at edge.  All emails that make it to the level of content 
filtering are then
sent through a weak spam filter (meaning one that will almost never generate a 
false positive).  Let
us say this weak filter, in combination with the pre-acceptance spam blocking, 
identifies 95% of spam
emails as unambiguously being spam.  Bounces are now generated only to the 
remaining 5% of emails.
Now ISACS can only increase a network's traffic up to 5%.  This small increase 
in traffic should be
quite tolerable.  We have also dramatically decreased the number of innocent 
people who will be hit
with these bounces because a spammer forged their email address.  (Frankly if a 
spammer can forge
your address then you must really be getting hit with spam, so activating ISACS 
would solve your
problems).  Using a 'normal' spam filter instead of a weak one will obviously 
place an even lower
burden on the email system."

Once again I am actually tremendously encouraged by the criticism I have 
received because all
of the major criticisms have been readily addressed.  No other proposed system 
is impervious to
any technical subversion by spammers while allowing strangers to communicate 
and while being this
easy to use and integrate into the existing email structure.  Or at least no 
one has yet to give
any reason to believe otherwise.

I believe that the critique portion of my website 
http://home.nyc.rr.com/spamsolution/An%20Effective%20Solution%20for%20Spam.htm
now answers all of the significant issues brought up concerning my system.  If 
there is
an important flaw that is not addressed then I would certainly like to know 
about is.

Thank You,
Michael G. Kaplan


Thank you for your feedback.  I have updated my website in response to
what I
believe were the most significant criticisms of my method, and I believe
that
my method is now devoid of any major flaws.

Charmingly put, but you're sadly mistaken!

You have failed to address the major flaw in your process which occurs
because your system introduces a new message into the transport system for
every questionable message identified by your system.

It is not enough to simply mask spam from end-users where this is done at
the expense of a significant increase of load other parts of the system,
particularly those parts outwith your control, and most importantly those
parts for which there will be a tangible dollar cost.

The fact that low volume systems may have excess capacity does not mean
that increasing load is without cost though it may be accomodated without
expenditure. What it does mean is that part of the cost of the redundant
capacity is now associated directly with the generated messages. Likewise a
system which is efficiantly utilising close to its full capacity would
require investment in infrastructure to allow it to participate.
Your system does not make this participation optional. Any party
transporting mail destined for any party using your system would require to
double their capacity for that route.

Any effective system must be cost effective, not just technically complete.
The cost of transporting unwanted email is already a significant part of
the problem and your system will increase, rather than reduce, this cost.

d.

-- 
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