On Thursday, March 6, 2003, at 06:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
Not if it's registered in a haven like Vanuatu.A "disposable domain" is TRACEABLE, so we can nail the spammer, and with the increase in anti-spam laws, the cost gets higher as time goes on.
Huh? <http://www.vunic.vu/legalese.htm>
Spamming
TVL feels very strongly that the sending of unsolicited bulk email or
excessive Usenet posting ("spamming") constitutes theft of service,
and we do not condone the use of .VU domain names for this purpose.
If we receive complaints that a .VU domain name has been used for this purpose, we will advise the domain owner of the complaint and request that they desist from this activity. TVL reserves the right to remove any .VU name registration if a name is used as a source of
spam, or an address to which to reply to such bulk mail solicitations. We will also publish the names and contact information
for any accounts terminated for such a reason.
Assuming that the above is just window dressing, and that .vu is indeed a spam haven, this is easy to solve:
Block domains in .vu from subscribing or posting to your list, either at the MTU (spam filtering before the subscription request or confirmation email gets to the list server) or in the list server config files (e.g with majordomo's taboo_header, block if the from ends with .vu).
If a spammer (who can be *identified* via their disposable domain
(because they have subscribed and confirmed to your list)) is in "a
haven like Vanuatu" and decided to repeatedly forge Habeas headers in their email, I bet Habeas would find a way to track them down and sue. But if "a haven like Vanuatu" is so impermiable that spammers can spam from it with impunity and we (list managers) can't safely/easily implement "haven-wide" anti-spam blocking, then we (TINW) have a lot bigger problem than if they can auto-bot subscribe to and then spam mailing lists.
jc
