However, the point is that spammers do send e-mails that are
entirely random text content, so they could learn to send randomized madlibs
instead.
This is a special case of a more general phenomenon. Spammers have been
forced, by the more effective antispam methods, to adopt practices
Agreed.
that
severely limit their business success.
The jury has not reached a verdict.
[...]
In short, I don't think anti spam measures need to be 100% effective on
their own to have long term effectiveness. Every time we raise the bar for
spammers, we reduce their ability to make money from their efforts. Forcing
them to buy throwaway domains means they either have to spend some of their
own money, or steal someone elses. The former cuts into profits, the latter
exposes them to conventional law enforcement. Forcing them to buy throwaway
domains also forces them into at least a psuedo legitimate business
relationship with the domain registrar. That opens another avenue of attack
against them.
I am skeptical, because none of the past "raised costs" has ever caused the %
of email that is spam to stop going up.
This is I think because the cost of "internet time" decreases, while the costs
of goods sold by spam increases. I see this only continuing, as we build more
economies of scale in networking. T
Remember, spammers adopted domain spoofing in response to outside pressure.
[...]
If we take it away, we are forcing them to give up a choice they made for
their own advantage. We are driving them backwards. That hurts them.
They already use throwaway domains on their urls.
Even throwaway IPs will be cheaper under IPv6.
The all or nothing argument is being used against SPF and other
authentication schemes in the press right now. The argument goes: SPF
doesn't stop all spam, for all time, everywhere and therefore it is useless
and should be abandoned.
Obviously I disagree with that press, else I would not be involved here.
So I agree with you that press is incorrect.
I just think the PASS result for non-spam domains will be more useful than the
PASS result for spam domains.