On Fri, 4 Dec 2009, Charles Gregory wrote:
As soon as any whitelist service like 'returnpath' accepts a client, they
perform the following:
1) Review the client's address list - look for honeypot addresses.
If any are found, clearly the client has not vetted their list.
2) Perform their OWN 'opt-in' mailout to that list.
"Hello, we at (company eg. Retunrpath) have contracted to operate a
mailng list on behalf of (client name). They have provided your
address as one that has *requested* advertising mailouts from their
company. We respectfully request that you verify this
subscription/request by replying to this e-mail. IF you do nothing,
this will be your last mailing from this company."
Both would have to be done any time a new address was added to the mailing
list. And there would have to be some watchdog ensuring the MSP doesn't
relax the policy over time.
It's a great idea. The problem is, how do you get mail service providers
to do this? What causes them loss of revenue if they _don't_ do it?
About the only leverage I can see is if the large ISPs and freemail
providers (hotmail, comcast, MSN, etc.) start to outright block MSPs that
don't auditably follow these guidelines. And I don't see that happening.
I'm sure we would all live with the occasional true 'opt-in' request,
Absolutely, particulary if it's the proper "ignore means permission
denied" model.
if we knew that the end result would be that it would stifle spam by
giving the legitimate mailers, the ones whose mail we *want* anyway, a
better chance to reach us.
I don't think it would have that effect. Being able to force such a policy
onto MSPs won't affect spambot networks.
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhar...@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
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