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Re: [ietf-smtp] IETF Policy on dogfood consumption or avoidance - SMTP version

2019-12-27 11:44:42
Hi Sam,
At 04:13 AM 27-12-2019, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
.... and since it is clearly unwise to expect a technical fix to address
a social problem (that's my generality for the mix!) the social nature
of their approach is at least heading in the right sort of direction

That's where I will disagree. There may be some social aspects to spam, but
it is mostly a technical problem. The technical problem is the open nature
of SMTP. That will never change, and this technical problem is only solvable
mostly by other technical means, that are rooted in something other than
SMTP.

In any case, there's nothing that can anyone show that any social or legal
approach to fighting spam will make any difference whatsoever. Again: look

There is a (IRTF) RFC which has the following text: "rise of spam and other anti-social behavior ..." I did a search of the IETF mailing list archives for other discussions of the topic. I could not find anything significant using the IETF search engine. I couldn't use a well-known search engine for the search as, some time back, the IETF blocked the search engine from indexing its mailing list. Anyway, from what I remember of IETF-related discussions, spam used to be describe as a social problem.

A technical mechanism used by the IETF to curtail spam spurred this thread. I gather that there is agreement that technical approaches are being used to curtail spam. However, the merits of the different approaches are debatable.

I noticed the following in an email: "Authentication-Results: [removed]; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=tpcoms.vn header.i=@tpcoms.vn". There is a PTR RR for the IP address from which the message was sent. The author of the message has the same name as a government official in .cz. My guess is that it was a phishing attempt. It would be very difficult to prove that without additional information, and that may require taking a legal approach.

There are countries which have enacted laws [1] related to email. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a group of legislators who were interested in that topic. It is useful to have such laws instead of leaving email as an undefined space [2].

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. http://r.elandsys.com/r/67728
2. That does not mean that those laws will stop unwanted emails from being sent.
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