RE: spam

--On Wednesday, 28 May, 2003 00:01 +0200 "Fam. van den Berg" 
<inanbe(_at_)xs4all(_dot_)nl> wrote:
> Just a simple question: Can spam mail be caused by violating
> RFC 2821?
Michel asked what you mean by "violating".   I would add, and 
what do you mean by "caused"?
If I may guess at the question...

It is the case that most spam email that I've looked at recently 
is non-comformant to RFC2821 in one detail or another, usually 
in the order of Received fields as they try to fake those data, 
rather than in the envelope (serious protocol violations in the 
envelope typically result in non-delivery).  But there is little 
or no evidence that even optimally-positioned filters that would 
reject or drop all non-conforming messages would significantly 
reduce the volume of spam over any long period of time.  Such 
filters would also drop legitimate mail originating from at 
least some versions of what are probably the two most common 
desktop mail clients today (one might debate whether that would 
be a good thing --it would certainly help with virus/worm 
control-- but it isn't a spam issue).
The evidence is that, if it became clear that a serious effort 
was developing to deploy such filters, the spammers would start 
sending conforming messages more rapidly than the filters could 
actually be spun up.  Would this inconvenience them, or the 
authors of spam tools?  Yes, but almost certainly not very much 
or for very long.  It would, perversely, actually help the 
businesses of the spam tool builders: "get your new, updated, 
standards-conforming bulk mailer here and get past the new 
2821-conformance-testing filters".
     john