Remember that urban legend that the U.S. Government was going to outlaw all SMTP servers, except for those run by the U.S. Post office? Ha ha ha! But anyway:
Exciting ideas! I have never worked on SMTP but I've used it since 1991 or so. This is all strictly from a user standpoint. Let me just stream-of-conciousness a few ideas in my head... Going back to the USPS urban legend, think for a moment about how e-mail does, and doesn't, mirror snail mail. Spammers can essentially set up their own "Post Office", and this is bad. My proposal would be that Trilug-SMTP be made of a network of servers that work on a graylist/trust type of method. For instance: There are 15 servers happily running T-SMTP. They regularly communicate with each other about who is trusted. I set up my T-SMTP server, and by default, I'm a trusted new member of the group. However, my server starts routing large amounts of e-mail in a short period of time(Flag #1), most of which is caught by the built-in T-SMTP spam filters (flag #2), and finally, is reported to be "junk" by users. (another feature of my imaginary T-SMTP). In fact, many of the fifteen T-SMTP are casting a wayward eye at my rogue T-SMTP server, and thus it gets individually blacklisted by those particular servers. Now, your T-SMTP server may have a threshold level that says, "If sixty percent of my trusted T-SMTP fellows blacklist an IP, then I too shall blacklist that IP." Then later, if it is revealed that my T-SMTP server had been hacked, and I REALLY NEED the T-SMTP world to trust me, I'd have to re-initiate a "Please remove me from the blacklist!" You have configured your T-SMTP server to give me, say, Three chances to automatically re-instate you as a member. But then, if I continue to spam, I get flagged AGAIN, not only by users manually and servers automatically, but I have a previous record! A rap sheet! Blacklisted again, and this time, there is not redemption: My IP shall never be trusted again. There are pitfalls to this idea, I'm sure, but like I said: I'm a user, not an admin of SMTP. I just want to help! I HATE SPAM!!! :) One final note: E-mail clients that allow HTML <a href are LAME!!! It is due to a client which tries to be helpful but causes harm, that allow phishers to steal millions of dollars. It drives me crazy. My circuits are overloaded. Must stop typing now. wab -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
