On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, David MacQuigg wrote:
Stuart, thanks for the clarification. I will continue reading the list,
but refrain from offering any more "neutral" advice. It's just not being
accepted, or even understood, by any of the warring camps. My main efforts
now are on a neutral "Registry" that does not depend on cooperation of
senders, or any approval from IETF.
You were arguing with Scott Kitterman. But since you mentioned me,
I'll chime in.
I support SPF because I am tired of forged email. Spam is a related,
but separate issue. 'spam' varies with the recipient. For instance, my
parents actually *want* to get email ads for alternative medicine,
but they don't want email from the companies they trust to be forged. The
companies they use send me unsolicited ads which I don't want (i.e., they
are spammers in the UBE sense). But they are easy to get rid of because
they do not forge the sender. Their products are real - I've seen them when
visiting my parents. Heh - I even tried the elderberry syrup for a cold,
it seemed to work. (But controlled studies are scant.)
UBE can be coped with, it is the forged and obfuscated mail that desperate
spammers send in an attempt to get past filters that is the problem.
I guess that is basically the theory behind the CAN-SPAM act. You CAN spam,
provided you don't do *really* abusive things like forge the sender.
That is actually a decent compromise. A government mandated standard for
tagging bulk advertisements in the Subject or an auxilliary rfc822 header
would make me really happy. (Tags should include some kind of rating, so
for instance, porn ads wouldn't be delivered to children.) The current
requirement of "clearly marked" doesn't cut it. There has to be a specific
syntax.
Even better, a mandatory ESMTP tag for UBE would be ideal - I could screen the
UBE without wasting bandwidth on DATA, but I suppose that is a hopeless
dream. I guess the reason even "legitimate" marketroids won't support such a
measure is that they feel the need to force you to view their ads, somehow.
--
Stuart D. Gathman <stuart(_at_)bmsi(_dot_)com>
Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.