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Re: Mail-Transmitter RR




Derek Atkins wrote:

> consider this: if not everyone is doing it, then what's the point?  If
> it's not a ubiquitous solution, then it's not going to solve the spam
> problem.  All it will do is prevent spammers from forging a valid
> email address to recipients that have agreements with that individual.

This is the crux of *an* argument, but not *the* argument, IMO.

 Negative: The spammers will stop using hotmail.com, will scurry
    away from the bright light, and will start forging mail from
    somebody else's domain. Zero-sum gain for us, the recipients
    of spam.

 Negative: We lose a valuable filter (DENY HOTMAIL.COM).

 Positive: Hotmail has control over it's domain. I can accept
    mail from them again.

 Positive: Nobody will send forgeries from *my* domain. They
    will not announce winners for contests I've never held. They
    will not spread trojans *from other networks* claiming to be
    coming from me.

 Positive: Nobody will send forgeries from *your* domain, if you
    choose to opt-in to the self-ACL scheme.

 Positive: I have another weighting filter for my post-transfer
    filtering scheme, whereby non-participants are slightly less
    credible, while participants get whitelisted automatically.

There is only one negative that hurts. The other negative is a neutral.

There are certainly other valid issues with this approach. It can be very
difficult for ultra-mobile users to participate, for example. But it is
also elective, and only applies to the mail domain under your control.

I just can't see anything wrong with letting people say "only accept mail
from me if it comes from this network".

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/

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