Problem with your 'Solution' [LWN.net]

Problem with your 'Solution'

Posted May 6, 2004 13:20 UTC (Thu) by fergal (subscriber, #602)
In reply to: Problem with your 'Solution' by yodermk
Parent article: 82% of email is spam

Say a user of an ISP sends a million spams. All million (short) notification messages go out to the clients. BUT, someone at the ISP would almost certainly get some clue rather quickly that a spam was sent. *ZAP* and the message is gone from the ISP's server, and whoever hadn't checked their mail yet will be fortunate enough not to see it or waste bandwidth downloading it!

Your faith in the attentiveness of ISPs is a little misplaced. Why do you think ISPs will keep their spam spotting software right up to date when even today we still encounter the trivially fixable problem of open relays?

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Problem with your 'Solution'

Posted May 6, 2004 23:28 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

> Why do you think ISPs will keep their spam spotting software right up to date when even today we still encounter the trivially fixable problem of open relays?

Because they'd enter blacklists if they don't.

Problem with your 'Solution'

Posted May 7, 2004 8:19 UTC (Fri) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

Are you suggesting we would have blacklists for ISPs that don't keep their spam filters up to date?

How exactly would you keep that blacklist up to date? Wouldn't you have to aim spam probes at various ISPs and see if they block them. Good luck with that project.

Problem with your 'Solution'

Posted May 17, 2004 11:50 UTC (Mon) by coolian (guest, #14818) [Link]

The original "IM2000" guy is obviously a hard-core democrat. I'm no Republican, but this "legislate my butt out of existence" and "trust the ISP not to go down" thing is WAY too much trust for me.