--------- Original Message -------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [xmail] Re: fighting against spam... Date: 02/05/04 09:10
> > > [snip]About spam, > > people should be more carefull where they enter their email adresses and > > also list administrators could make list more secure (at least to > > prevent listing the list to see who is subscribed). This and only this > > is the problem of spam. > > > I strongly disagree here. Spammers are actively scanning every domain for > valid email addresses. Even if you have an email address that nobody knows > about, it will eventually get bombed with spam. Just watch the logs closely > on any busy email server, and you will see one dictionary attack after the > next. Blaming spam on the end user receiving it is simply wrong. I agree > some people unwisely bring extra spam on themselves by posting all over the > place using their email address, but spammers will find their email address > even if they do not do that. > > There is technology already available to us to filter much of the spam. To > filter the majority fo all spam, you need to use a mixture of methods. One > very good idea is to block every known open relay, since spammers still rely > heavily on those open relays. The ORDB RBL is a list of all known open > relays, and it definitely blocks a lot of spam. SpamAssassin also helps > noticably. With SpamAssassin, you really need to train the engine on ham > and spam periodically to make sure it catches a high amount. Spammers will > constantly change their patterns to trick SpamAssassin, so manually teaching > it the spam it misses is a critical function. And of course, you should > require all of your own users to use SMTP AUTH to relay email. This way all > email relayed through your box will contain an X-Auth header, so you can > quickly track down the user if one of your users is sending spam. > > To decrease a large amount of incoming spam, we need a solution to stop from > address forging. The proposals like RMX would definitely help reduce a > significant amount of spam. Any solution that noticably cuts down on > address forging will also noticably cut down on spam, since most spam is > sent with forged addresses. > I agree with Shiloh's assessment. Please don't blame me for the crap I receive in my inbox. Also, I'd like to re-emphasize that a mixture of methods is needed to filter the junk. Using one method isn't enough in my experience. SpamAssassin offers many methods and uses a scoring mechanism of the different methods to determine spam. There are probably other similar methods, but this is the best I've seen. To address the original issue - fighting against spam, filtering doesn't fight spam, it removes the symptoms instead of fixing the disease. Which for some people is ok -- if I don't see the spam in my inbox (because of filtering) then that's just as good as never receiving it. -Don - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe xmail" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For general help: send the line "help" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
