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Re: [Asrg] SMTP pull anyone?

2009-08-17 12:35:37
I don't see how push or pull fundamentally changes the spam
equation in any case. The problem wrt spam is the any-any nature
of who you receive communication from, not who initiates the
connection.

I can create a walled garden trivially with smtp just be rejecting
connections from people not on my whitelist. Likewise, anything that
is promiscuous with who it receives from better be prepared for
mail-transmitted diseases (MTD's). That's just the nature of opening
up. So SMTP itself isn't the problem, or more specifically fretting
about SMTP is nipping around the edges of 20 with the 80-20 rule.

Mike

On 08/16/2009 03:29 PM, John Levine wrote:
SMTP is currently a push protocol and is initiated by the the
sender, no controlling that fact.

But it is possible to overcome the relay problems, IP spoofing and
domain impersonation etc,

by making the servers pull the mails.

US6192407

Ah, right, the famous Tumbleweed patent.  Here's a better link
with a readable version.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6192407

This patent covers the idea of putting a message on a web server and
sending the recipient a URL to retrieve the message.  Tumbleweed
enforces it very aggressively.  See the list of suits in their
Wikipedia page.

Were it not for the patent, I expect we'd have a lot of institutions
setting up per-user password protected RSS or Atom feeds with
statements and other messages, and sending you mail telling you to
check your feed when there's something new.

R's,
John
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