[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ben Bucksch) writes: > > Manuel Lemos wrote: > > > >> I just posted this > >> design proposal for an anti-spam add-on to Mozilla Mail/News > > > Just a general note about anti-spam: > > I have been unfairly hit by anti-spam measures several times, so I fully > agree with the EFF statement [1]: Anti-spam measures must not punish > innocent senders.
Absolutely. > My personal experiences: > > MAPS DUL has a list of dial-up IP addresses, and many (about 10 or 20%?) > smtp servers reject mail coming in directly from these addresses, > claiming it were spam. See my Anti-DUL [2] page why that is a bad idea (TM). > > From-based filtering does not work. From a naive POV, it might be a safe > bet to consider anything from an email address which has previously been > used as From address in a spamming as spam. However, From addresses can > trivially be forged, and spammers routinely do that to not get the > thousands of delivery failure messages. Often, they use invalid or > throw-away addresses, which will only clog your database, but the > premier assholes use addresses in their recipients database as From. A > spammer once did this to me, sending out pheromone advertizing with > ben.bucksch/at/beonex.com as From address. Imagine the fun on my part. > Now, if that meant that my address would from now on be blocked my some > people, that would be a real problem. Right, From-based filtering might catch a few things, but is not likely to be terribly effective. If blacklist/whitelist matching is to be an option, we'll probably need to look at the Received lines for that. > Even worse would it be, if my mail were not blocked, but silently (for > me as sender) be deleted. So, IMO, the best thing to do would be to > bounce the mail. > > I oppose anything in Mailnews that encourages users to (probably > unknowingly) reject (or even silently delete) mail which *could* be real > individual mail from a real person. In my mind, the general way that spam-filtering is likely to work best (ie without losing any unwanted mail) has a couple of pre-conditions: 1) It's off by default. People who want it would need to specifically go out of their way to turn it on. 2) The default action for any filter hits would be to simply move the messages to a folder called "Potential Spam", where the user can quickly skim the list, and if everything really does appear to be spam, delete it in one shot. Dan
