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Re: A (possibly) novel way of dealing with spam/UBE

1998-02-25 07:41:24
On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 psmith(_at_)oakland(_dot_)edu wrote:

| I'm in the process of implementing a scheme which:
| 
|   - Accepts mail if from a recognized source
| 
|   - Bounces all other mail back, with a rejection letter attached

I hate to break this to you, but it's been done. For most users it's
non-optimal, IMHO - it hassles the people mailing too much to have to
spend all that time and effort just to get a mail through. I know in 99%
of the  cases I'd just go 'bah' and forget I ever saw your email address,
so I guess it will reduce not only spam but the rest of your emails as
well ;)

In addition, all the needless junk you'll be firing off to everyone who
isn't on your authorized list will further use up precious bandwith, 
which makes you part of the problem to some extent rather than the
solution, IMHO.

| allowing subsequent mail from them to be accepted as is.  The
| registration process is painless (litte more than hitting the "reply"
| button), and most new senders won't mind because, after all, they
| are initiating the contact in the first place.

Well, I know I'd mind. I'm sure others would too, so there's no way
I'll be implementing this, but good luck to you with it.

| And when the new sender is replying to a mail from you, they may not
| have to register at all, assuming you have pre-registered them (or
| their entire domain) ahead of time, anticipating a reply.  You can
| do this manually, or even use an "outgoing filter" to do this
| automatically for any mail you send out.

Can you spell 'hassle for everyone - sender or filteruser', boys and
girls? ;)

Right now, I pass everything that's not written in a known spam-
mailer program, doesn't have certain phrases in the mail or the 
subject and are adressed to me personally. Everything that arrives
here that's bulk-addressed goes straight in the spamfolder. That
deals with 99.9% of my spam - without any hassle whatsoever for 
the people mailing me and little hassle for myself. 

--

Kimmo Jaskari                   | ÅLCOM - Ålands Datakommunikation Ab
kimmo(_at_)alcom(_dot_)aland(_dot_)fi           | Phone +358-(0)18-12122
http://www.alcom.aland.fi/kimmo | http://www.alcom.aland.fi