[Phys-L] Re: spam blocking programs

[Stefan Jeglinski <jeglin@4PI.COM>]

> If you can't figure out how to do that, you reeeeally shouldn't be
> running your own mailhost.  Shut down your mailhost and start
> getting your mail through gmail or some such.

I must have missed something. I see no reason to assume he is
controlling/running his own mailhost. First of all, the
challenge-response methods he seems to be describing are quite
popular with ISPs such as Earthlink, so I would assume it originates
with something similar (I don't use gmail, but I wouldn't be
surprised if Google has such an options as well). Second, I know of
no one who controls their own mailhost that does anything like this
(other than ISPs). But I only know responsible mailhost operators :-)

I agree that it is onerous, and those that hit me with it generally
don't get any more mail from me. At the very least, such a feature
should give the user some degree of control, exactly for examples
such as mailing lists.

> Almost by definition, a criterion for a good security system is that
> it impose a large burden on the bad guys and a small burden on the good
> guys.  The system described above fails this criterion.

Unfortunately, with spammers this has not been particularly
effective. There's not even much evidence that recent successful
prosecutions have changed the landscape or profitability of spamming.
When real-time blacklists and the like came into being, there were a
few high-profile cases, and continue to be, but spammers in general
see it as a cost of doing business. They just move on. If you're
running spamassassin etc, good for you, but there is no real burden
put on spammers. The only ways I've seen that really put burdens on
them are passive or active counterattacking. It shouldn't take much
thought to see that, satisfying as that might be personally, it can
also fail the stated criterion, although not always as badly.


Stefan Jeglinski
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