Dave Aronson <spamtrap(_dot_)ietf(_at_)dja(_dot_)mailme(_dot_)org> wrote:
On Fri February 27 2004 09:29, Tom Petch wrote:
If sending 1M messages got back a 1% response saying 'you failed'
with no clue as to which 1% failed, we might cut down on the spam.
Maybe I just have too much blood in my caffeine stream,
;^)
but I don't see the connection. J. Random Spammer spews 1M spams,
and receives back (assuming he used a valid sending address)
Yes, let us assume the actual sender gets the "spam-refused" error.
10K "this looked like spam" DSNs, in addition to the usual load of
angry replies, removal requests, "no such user", "no such domain",
"over quota", etc., plus the occasional purchase. What incentive do
the 10K new DSNs give him, to mend his evil ways, or even just to
scale back?
No incentive to "mend his evil ways"; but a cost which may reduce
the total amount of spam. (Recall that many believe a one-cent-per-
spam cost would essentially eliminate the problem.)
Indeed, it seems to me that if anything, it helps him see what does or
does not work against spam filters, so he can tune his filter-evasion
strategies.
I claim that benefit is minimal -- spammers have other ways of
gathering the data to tune their filter-evasion.
The benefit to the false-positive-sender, OTOH, is major. S/he knows
that the email never got through, and can use one of the many available
out-of-band methods to communicate the message. Iljitsch's point was
that the false-positive problem is much less serious if senders of
non-spam learn their email was discarded as spam.
(I'd rather not speculate on whether the minimal benefit to the
spammer is greater or less than the admittedly-minimal cost.)
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>