Charles,
> I am not running my own outgoing MTA, nor is the MTA I use under my
> control. I believe this is the case for >99% of the internet. Your
> "solution" while perhaps technically elegant is not useful in
> practice.
Oh, ok.
As I said earlier, TMDA isn't for everybody.
It looks like it isn't for you.
I described it in the hopes that it might be useful to others;
whether TMDA is popular or unpopular with the internet on the
whole does not matter to me in any way at all. I derive no
income or glory from being a happy user; the only benefits
are intrinsic. When used in combination with Spamassassin, TMDA
cut my spam burden down to about 1 per month.
Incidentally, if you ever do want to run your own MTA for only
$30/month you can get a physical box (not just a virtual machine)
from serverpronto.com. They are very bare-bones in terms of
services, but then that's one of the reasons they can be so cheap.
Their connectivity is quite good (direct fiber to Tier 1 backbones).
If you want, they can pre-load it with Debian, FreeBSD, or whatever
else you'd like.
> >> Challenge response is an automatic noise amplifier in an already noisy
> >> environment. You are contributing to everyone else's problem in
> >> trying to solve yours.
> >
> > Again, I believe this is incorrect (see above).
> >
> > Speaking of amplification, you seem to have transformed
> > a concern into an accusation rather quickly. If your human
> > protocol does not include politeness, there's very little
> > point in discussing much else.
>
> Accusation? If you say so. I think of it as reporting an observed
> fact.
Perhaps your filters are misconfigured.
It seems that way to me, based on what you're saying.
> Using the scientific method I have formed a hypothesis based on
> my observations. I'm sorry if you find my hypothesis personally
> offensive, that is not my intent.
I don't find your hypothesis offensive, just the groundless
accusation that I have personally offloaded work on to others
and created problems. I've done nothing of the sort.
> However the observed fact remains. Most of the spam that actually
> makes it into my inbox is a result of challenges to forged email.
> Challenges cause work, not for the sender, but for an uninvolved third
> party. Challenge systems send unsolicited (the recipient didn't ask
> for it) bulk (by responding in an automated way to incoming bulk)
> email.
>
> Therefore challenge/response systems generate spam.
If the challenges you're seeing take on a wild variety
of forms, they they are probably actual spams posing
as challenges (hence c/r can't be faulted); if they are
highly patterned, then they are easily eliminated and
should not be visible to you in the first place.
As pointed out earlier, the extra bandwidth consumed is
quite negligible, even if *everybody* were doing this.
Therefore, the "third party" argument does not convince me.
Perhaps we've reached a point of irreducible disagreement.
I'm guessing this is the case now.
-Jon
