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Re: filtering of mailing lists and NATs

2001-05-22 06:00:03
    Date:        Mon, 21 May 2001 20:21:10 -0700
    From:        grenville armitage <gja(_at_)ureach(_dot_)com>
    Message-ID:  <3B09DB26(_dot_)AA6383A4(_at_)ureach(_dot_)com>

  | Most spammers strike me as opportunistic and not overly interested
  | in special-case-handling a couple of subscribe-to-send lists,

Of course, and as long as they can get to the vast majority of their
target, it will probably remain that way.

But as soon as the spammers need to go to some extra effort to reach
their audience, you can be sure they will.  Remember, once, they sent
from any random invented host name - then everyone started having their
mailers reject mail from unknown domains - now all the spam comes from
perfectly valid domains, which not only makes the checks for invalid
domains a waste of time (the check spends time achieving nothing at all)
but also results in all the failed spam (the bounces - and the abuse from
people who received it) being dumped on whichever unfortunate site they
picked to use as the domain name.

A supposed technological fix to a non-technological problem that just
made things worse, not better.

Now we're having suggested that only "known" e-mail addresses be allowed
to send to certain destinations.   Assuming that becomes really popular
(rather than just used on a small set of irrelevant lists) how long do you
think it will be before the spammer's lists of names contain not only the
destination address, but the From: address they should use to send to that
address?

I mean, how hard do you think it is to stick From: gja(_at_)ureach(_dot_)com
in the heading of the mail?

One more technological fix that won't work.   And again, it will make
things worse, since then we won't be able to tell easily what is
traffic from people we expect to send to the lists, and what is not.

This is not a technological problem - it is a social problem.  We cannot
fix spam by technological means - it has to be fixed by social means.

And not only are technological "fixes" making things actually worse as
illustrated above, they're also suggesting to people that perhaps there
may be a technological fix that will actually finally solve the problem,
which lessens the demand for real social fixes instead.

Give up, let the spam through, deluge everyone with it - then the
opposition to it will rise quickly enough, and become urgent enough,
that the correct kind of remedies can be put in place.

kre