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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Paul's Mailfrom (Was: IETF SMTP Working Group Proposal at
On August 27, 2002 at 03:15 [email protected] (Paul Vixie) wrote: > > > Every single purely technical approach to stopping spam has been a > > complete loser. > > In the fullness of time, the universe itself will die of heat. So what? How come this makes me want to raise the issue of our immortal souls? > What matters more is what use is made of time before it gets so "full." A > number of purely technical approaches to stopping spam have been quite > successful... in the short term... which not the same as being a complete > loser in the long term. (Everything's a complete loser if you measure it > right.) I guess my assertion has been that it really hasn't been measured and the sense is that spam has always been rising either linearly or super-linearly. Putting bomb-sniffing dogs at the security gates only to see them take the planes with box-cutters is not my idea of "successful" even in the short term. So for example saying this or that filter appears to have repelled 1M spam msgs per day doesn't really prove much unless one can say with some (preferably mathematical) confidence that it's actually reduced spam not just caused it to flow around the filter. Put another way it'd be nice to know that a technical approach was statistically superior to just shutting off SMTP for an hour per day which would also block some amount of spam. Look! Not one single piece of spam from 1AM-2AM (while we had our machinery all turned off.) Maybe there is no technical solution, of any value, possible (at the system / DoS level, not talking about individual approaches like whitelisting.) I'm quite serious. I think it's sad to watch all this effort go into chasing technical solution after technical solution for all these years by so many bright people only to feel like it was all pretty much for naught. About the only real value I've seen is that we can at least sort of point at these efforts when some nihlist says "who is to say spam is bad?" and respond, well, these people are going to all this trouble (possibly futile) to stop it so I guess that's one bit of evidence that it's not universally loved. My point is that I think we really need to start focusing on solutions which aren't primarily or solely technical. One that keeps coming to mind is charging for all bulk commercial e-mail as a regular custom for reasons I've outlined here previously. But I don't claim that to be the only or even best solution. It's just one that makes some sense to me. And, more importantly, is an example of the kind of thing I'm thinking so people don't always finish reading my notes by shaking their heads and saying ``gosh he writes pretty well but WTF is he talking about???'' -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | [email protected] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
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