I think ultimately it would be good to "rank" by trust, e.g., with hundreds of thousands of entries, there will be some that MANY will trust, others will never be trusted - any everything in-between.
If this could be translated into a "weighted" list - then it would self-correct any "odd-balls" and benefit from the community wisdom on who deserves to be white-listed. Best Regards Andy Schmidt Phone: +1 201 934-3414 x20 (Business) Fax: +1 201 934-9206 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of R. Scott Perry Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 08:16 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Web-o-Trust >I think the attempt is admirable, as it is with the RBL's and anyone >else >that contributes to the "greater good," however I strongly believe that >the approach is flawed. I've had similar discussions regarding shared >blacklists and the same issue comes up over and over again...there needs >to be some form of unautomated management and an enforceable standard for >something like this to work. > >I checked out the limited number of submissions to that list and found >the >following file for instance: > > http://home.teleport.com/~amurph/web-o-trust.txt > >This file lists blocks containing Comcast and Earthlink mail servers. I'm guessing that they were added because they have troubles with spam filters, and aren't going to be sending out spam. Do you have a record of spam from those IPs? In this case, though, if you're unsure that you can trust them, you can use "omit: http://home.teleport.com/~amurph/web-o-trust.txt";. >It also includes the following list: > > http://users.adelphia.net/~equalizer/web-o-trust.txt > >This one contains addresses on Road Runner, Adelphia and three >educational >institutions, and this out of only the first 100 or so members. But, why shouldn't those IPs be listed? It looks like they are being listed for a good reason. >What's to stop me or someone else from having an epiphany and using >this >as my pseudo-whitelist all of a sudden and including places like Cheetah >Mail and Dart Mail? Some here consider that to be spam. In that case, you'll likely get limited. For example, we could put a "1" after your URL, so that people trusting us would only trust your IPs, not those of people that you trust (or if you put the actual IPs for Cheetah Mail and Dart Mail, we could remove your entry). >It seems like this would present more trouble than problems fixed. It could be. But only time will tell how it will really work out. >Sure, I don't need to trust this person, or who they trust, but I also >don't want to have to spend the time figuring out if someone currently has >a very poor understanding of whitelisting, or may at any time in the >future have a brain fart and start including the IP addresses of ISP's >where the users themselves, trustworthy or not, can be infected with >viruses and haplessly become open relays. This in itself is the #1 >problem in spam fighting currently. I think the goal here is for those people to be far enough down the ladder that limiting your trust would fix it. >It's the folks that don't own their IP space that are the hardest to >block, and these are the same guys that won't be discouraged by the Can >Spam laws because they are already criminals. Such a network and registry >if successful, also presents a large potential issue when compromised and >targeted...the map to the network is there for spoiling. True. But, it's going to be a major undertaking for little benefit. So they manage to get a few IPs in? They have to quickly send out spam before those IPs get removed. But even so, they don't know how many people are trusting them. Perhaps we can build something in where people don't get trusted until their WOT files have been active for X hours/days, allowing time for others with more time to omit them if needed. :) >Sorry to be so negative about the idea, but if it was all just this >simple, we wouldn't have a spam problem in the first place. But, the idea hasn't been put through the paces yet. Another idea is that if it is limited so that you can only add your own IPs, it may be more useful (so that the clueless admin can't just add Cheetah Mail and Dart Mail). >In the current suggested implementation, I just don't see the value as >a >whitelist of places that I'm pretty sure wouldn't have any problems to >begin with. Like us? We don't have anything that I consider a problem -- no spam has ever been sent from our mailserver, and there isn't any indicate that there will. But quite a few of Len's followers have blocked us. And for a few hours when EASYNET-DYNA added us, there were some people blocking just on that. Those people would *really* benefit from WOT -- which then benefits anyone who uses WOT. >Maybe it might be useful to have a conversation about alternative uses >for >such a program? I'm definitely interested in sharing some whitelists and >blacklists based on the above stated criteria, but only if we could all >agree on definitions, processes, and can be responsible. That's not an alternate use -- that's an intended use. :) There is nothing saying that everybody should be included in WOT, or that you should trust someone like us. If that works for you, great. If not, it's quite possible to start a WOT specific to certain uses. I hadn't even thought of blacklists, but that would work too (just so long as they were handled carefully, so that whitelists and blacklists didn't accidentally include each other!). -Scott --- Declude JunkMail: The advanced anti-spam solution for IMail mailservers. Declude Virus: Catches known viruses and is the leader in mailserver vulnerability detection. Find out what you've been missing: Ask about our free 30-day evaluation. --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". The archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com. --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] --- This E-mail came from the Declude.JunkMail mailing list. To unsubscribe, just send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and type "unsubscribe Declude.JunkMail". 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