Hi Isaac, On 1 Feb 2005 at 12:07, Isaac Obie <[email protected]> spoke, thus:
> someone is using zero spam. <sigh> this means we're going to get annoying > messages from this person's messages. There are two solutions: 1. Obey the messages, and surrender to evil. 2. Filter and delete the messages, and refuse to surrender to evil. If you do filter them, try doing so at the SMTP transport after receiving sufficient evidence of a CR message at the next available opportunity, with a rejection code from your MTA like so: 554-Policy demands that you disable your CR system for this domain. 554-We will not spend our valuable time proving our innocence to you, 554-especially if you make it difficult or impossible for us. 554 Your message will not be accepted. Go away, and don't come back. I used to do this sort of thing for several well-known CR providers out there, with the natural result that people began to hate me and call me a zealot and refuse communication with me and so on. Consequently, although I thoroughly object to these messages as being little short of insolent, I personally consider it infinitely more important to correct the recipient's objectionable spamfilter and get my message to him than I do to follow a principle of opinions about fighting the spam problem that will, after all, get us nowhere and probably get me more such CR messages and hate mail. I'm not exactly popular as it is for my existing mail policies, now also mostly defunct due to popular demand and arguments. Of course, the issue of exactly how CR systems work and their accessibility to vision-impaired people is a whole different matter, one which I won't cover here, but 0spam.com is not one such system - in fact, spammers are already learning to exploit the weakness reserved for blind people and similar systems which use email link confirmation to defeat this challenge. I must admit, 0spam.com could do better, at least by sending the confirmation code back to the original sender rather than a user- specified mailbox, no matter how secure the CR confirmation mail and link is. The CR messages are often called spam simply for being unsolicited, but let's be honest - the spammers are what we're up against, and we have to sympathise with the poor sods that consider it necessary to use them. They are, after all, desperate to stop spam, even if they do so selfishly. The user of these systems will soon learn the value of not using them, even if it will take a little time. At that time, the whole Internet will be full of nothing but self-serving CR systems and the owners behind them, at which point they will become useless. In the case of 0spam.com, it's possible to define keywords which will appear in legitimate messages for which confirmations should not be requested. The user of 0spam.com should set the list address as such a keyword and the problem will disappear. Cheers, Sabahattin -- If an email tells you to forward it to all your friends, please temporarily forget that I am your friend. Sabahattin Gucukoglu Phone: +44 20 88008915 Mobile: +44 7986 053399 http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/ Email/MSN: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Skype: SabahattinGucukoglu (requires authorisation, add me to your list first) SpeakFreely: sabahattin-gucukoglu.com (Please use CELP compression if your processor allows)
