[Coco] Reporting SPAM

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Alan Jones may have mentioned these words:

[snippage]

>Well that is one possible way to look at the problem Gene. It chaps my 
>hide that this trash is allowed to continue unabated. Someone, somehow has 
>to put a stop to it. If ISP's would pro-actively attack this problem it 
>could be solved.

{Rant on}

No, no it can't. Being a mail system administrator for the last *decade*, I 
can honestly tell you that there is *no fix for SMTP spam.* None. Nada. 
Null. Zilch, and whatever other language you want to use.

Anything smart enough to shore up SMTP's lack of authentication breaks SMTP.

Assuming you could stamp out all spam originating in the US, how are you 
going to stop rogue servers in... say... North Korea, China or Indonesia?

The *only* way to manage spam (notice I didn't say "stop") is to change the 
entire mail delivery backbone - i.e. ditch SMTP for a better protocol which:

1) has full authentication and security WRT delivery information, and

2) puts the storage burden on the *sender* - not the receiver.

We need to make spam more expensive on the sender than the receiver - 
*without* penalizing the non-abusers.

There are several new protocols designed to do just this - one's called 
IM2000 and it was designed a long time ago, but no-one's willing to put 
enough work into uprooting our existing infrastructure.

>  Reporting an unsolicited email to the senders ISP can help if and when 
> the ISP enforces "their" spam policy.

Yes, but I don't speak Korean, Mandarin or Farsi, so I can't communicate to 
a lot of the abusers out there to tell them to stop; not to mention all the 
spyware-ridden zombie PCs out there.

>  I am not an expert on this subject by no means.

I am.

>  But I believe that if each mail server had strict rules of compliance it 
> would be possible to weed out the spam, but it would take actual work by 
> the mail server's owner/operator.

I work 15-20 hours per week on the spam problem, and it's "never enough." 
I've designed a couple of different spam filter "solutions" which work for 
awhile, but the spammers eventually catch up...

>Let me give you an example from my packet radio sysop days as a ham radio 
>operator.

This example is a straw-man argument, and has ***absolutely nothing to do 
with Internet-based spam.*** I have an Extra-class ham radio license myself 
- the call is AB8KK.

>... and better software,

and who's going to uproot 37.539 bajallion people using our current email 
system to supplant it with a better one?

Geeks love change. [[ Remember when Archie, Veronica & WAIS were the kings 
of the 'net? ]] However, geeks aren't in charge of the Internet anymore. :-/

I'd normally say "plonk" at this point, but "Plugh." might be more apt. [[ 
Now if that's not the *lamest* attempt to bring a wonky thread ontopic... 
;-) ]]

{Rant off...}

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me
zmerch at 30below.com.         |
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers