Re: namedroppers, continued

On Mon, 09 Dec 2002 03:14:43 GMT, Lloyd Wood said:

> The act of subscribing to a list indicates that you know the list, and
> you're less likely to reject mail from people you don't know that
> comes or also comes via the list, since you're interested in reading
> that list -- unless the list is a simple exploder with no filtering
> mechanisms itself, in which case, subscribers pester each other
> (rather than the list) for computational proofs until the list
> implements spam filtering.
Let's look at some of the headers of the message I'm replying to:

Received: from fan.cc.vt.edu [198.82.161.8]     by localhost with POP3 
(fetchmail-5.9.0)        for valdis(_at_)localhost (single-drop); Sun, 08 Dec 
2002 22:41:03 -0500 (EST)

This is where my laptop picked up my mail via POP3.  My laptop can be aware of
the fact that I'm subscribed to IETF.  However, this is too late to make the
check effectively - it's already hit our central mail server.

Received: from steiner.cc.vt.edu ([10.1.1.14])  by gkar.cc.vt.edu (Sun Internet 
Mail Server sims.3.5.2001.05.04.11.50.p10)  with ESMTP id 
<0H6U0044F2BUL9(_at_)gkar(_dot_)cc(_dot_)vt(_dot_)edu>; Sun,  8 Dec 2002 
22:43:06 -0500 (EST)
Received: from loki.ietf.org (loki.ietf.org [132.151.1.177])  by 
steiner.cc.vt.edu (Mirapoint Messaging Server MOS 3.2.1-GA)  with ESMTP id 
ATX04442; Sun, 08 Dec 2002 22:42:56 -0500 (EST)

Unfortunately, steiner is the machine which *should* be doing the filtering
(in fact, it's one of our front-end virus scanners).  But there's no good way
for it to know what I'm subscribed to - and a good case can be made that often
the mail server should *not* know what I'm subscribed to (for privacy reasons).

You *could* sell me on a concept where I tell the mail server "accept any mail
that presents a token that hashes to <this>", where I provide a test that
doesn't provide any information regarding the sender.

Why?  Because I don't trust my government to resist the temptation. (Nor do I
trust any OTHER national goverment, for that matter).
-- 
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Senior Engineer
                                Virginia Tech

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