RE: [Asrg] C/R - What people say

["Eric D. Williams" <eric@infobro.com>]

On Thursday, May 15, 2003 7:49 PM, Yakov Shafranovich 
[SMTP:research@solidmatrix.com] wrote:
8<...>8
> ... As I mentioned before, we need to better define the goals of
> C/R. Is is to make sure that senders are legit, or is it going to an extra
> level to making sure the sender is human (essentially creating a Turing
> Test). As for having spammers set up automatic responders, see TDMA FAQ,
> section 1.1 (http://tmda.net/faq.cgi?req=all):
>
> ------snip--------
> "1.1. Can't spammers just setup an auto-responder to defeat TMDA? *
>
> In theory yes, but in practice this is not likely to happen. Most SPAM is
> unrepliable, so TMDA's confirmation requests are never delivered to them.
> They use non-valid return addresses as to not incur the cost of the
> tremendous number of bounces they generate. Using a valid return address to
> process all the bounces looking for confirmation messages to auto-reply to
> would defeat their economies of scale. It would also make them easy to
> block, track down and report, sue, etc. In short, trying to thwart TMDA in
> this manner would defeat the cost-effectiveness of the bulk-mailing
> process. Simple economics keep us safe.

This para. is interesting.  It proposes some significant properties of SPAM. 
 Is this information verifiable?  Was a study done to determine it's validity 
empirically, or is it anecdotal?  It does, at first glance, appear valid but I 
would be interested in validating the study used to garner this information 
before preceding on its base arguments.  Are there references in the document?

-e



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