> [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.

-
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]

Reply via email to