Subject: [Asrg] Re: The thin end of the wedge? SPF Thoughts

From: Douglas Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:53:55 -0800

Craig Cockburn said:

>The thin end of the wedge?
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4684942.stm
>  
>
Craig,

I'm at a loss to see how this changes anything in terms of what we might 
do to mitigate spam.  Now we have AOL and Yahoo seeing revenue in 
"legalized SPAM", in which a company pays postage to bypass the 
anti-spam filters installed by these providers.  I can just hear their 
customers now complaining about these postage-paid bulk e-mails, only to 
be told that receiving them is part and parcel of their TOS.  These guys 
appear to know how to consume every part of their customers.

The other interesting article at the site was on how America was 
apparently winning the war on spam.  SPAM rates are down according to 
the BBC, and they stated that many Americans are growing accustomed to 
spam as a minor nuisance, not enough to make them give up e-mail.  As a 
thermometer for Americans, I know the BBC to be flawed.  My informal 
poll of my two over-18 children indicates that they have abandoned 
e-mail because the channel is so noisy -- they do text messaging via 
their cellphones to the party they need to address, or use an instant 
messaging service.  I also know that, in a poll of a single elder 
American, even a single spam in my mailbox annoys me tremendously, with 
enough annoyance to imagine all sorts of mayhem perpetrated upon its sender.

As another measure, a significant number of the 3rd party bounce 
messages my postmaster account is now receiving is for mailbox full 
conditions.  So, for the affected individuals, spam is more than a minor 
nuisance -- it is preventing them from receiving messages they really 
need to see.  By the way, these "mailbox full" bounces often list many 
addresses for their providers, thus indicating that the mailboxes 
provided by these providers are unprotected by any anti-spam regime.  I 
pity their users.

All,

With regard to e-mail oddities and SPF thoughts, as a "newbie" I can't 
contribute much more than to watch the information my betters are 
providing me as it comes past.  However, with regard to the current 
.forward protocol as described by "der Mouse" and others, the outward 
appearance when ".forwarded" mail arrives at a foreign mailserver is 
identical to the outward appearance of spam -- mail from a perported 
user appearing from a mailserver not designated to send mail from that 
user's domain.  Hence, either ".forwarding" needs to go away, or a 
simple method instituted to differentiate it from spam. And "simple" in 
my mind means not more complicated than a DNS lookup.  I'm now looking 
at all the abbreviations tossed forth in the argument to see what they 
mean and whether they a synonym for my Holy "simple" Grail.

Cheers,
Doug Campbell

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From: "Jon Kyme" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 09:55:59 +0000

Douglas Campbell:
> thermometer for Americans, I know the BBC to be flawed.  

It think it's worth mentioning that the BBC article you mention is
*reporting* on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report - which you could
read here:
http://www.ftc.gov/reports/canspam05/051220canspamrpt.pdf

Maybe that's suitable as a "thermometer". I couldn't possibly say.  

FWIW, it looks like the US is still the No.1 spam-relaying country:
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/01/dirtdozjan05.html

Rgds,
JRK