[Asrg] Re: Anti-spam laws do work, FYI. There's proof.

[Philip Miller <millenix at zemos.net>]

Barry Shein wrote:
>  > > Why would it be easier than just looking at the IP address of the
>  > > sending host, which would be the infected zombie, which is right now
>  > > stamped at the top of every single piece of e-mail you receive?
>  > 
>  > OK, "Easier for the "Average Joe" out there ;-)
>
> Since you claim that the SPF result would be easier for the average
> joe to understand might you give us an example of what, exactly, the
> average joe would see in this new scenario that's so easy to
> understand?

The original design of what's now called SPF Classic had no effect on what 
was displayed in the MUA. It is purely for MTAs and spam filters to deal 
with, and should, theoretically, result in a reject where the response is 
negative.

> Nah, no one knows, it was just another knee-jerk response!
>
> Howsabout: SPF et al will make the country, and the world, safer from
> terrorism. Do it for the children!

Lose the sarcastic rhetoric, please. It doesn't help your argument or 
advance the discourse in any way.

> > Getting rid of forgeries will also get rid of most of the "you sent me
> > virus/spam" mails.
>
> Yeah it might get rid of some of those, back to the joe job scenario.

Combined with strong ISP policies, it could completely eliminate false 
accusations of unwanted mail transmission. It is one less domain that 
spammers can infringe upon in their messages. Is this a bad thing?

>  > > Yeah it would probably help with that somewhat, "joe jobs", no
>  > > argument, but that's not spam per se.
>  > 
>  > The net effect is the same - lots of unwanted crap in your mailbox.
>  > Getting bombarded with 17000+ mails like that in one day is not fun.
>
> But what about spam?

From your responses, you appear to hold a fairly narrow definition of spam. 
Along the lines of Unsolicited Bulk Commercial Email. If one uses a more 
inclusive definition, those viruses and blowback and complaints are spam, too.

>  > There is nother positive side effect too.  SPF would essentially kill off
>  > the current generation of worms that forge the sender's address.
>
> Why? I thought those ran on the sender's infected machine. Can't the
> sender's infected machine send mail "from" the owner of that infected
> machine?

The current generation of worms forge effectively random addresses 
(permutations of local parts and domains found in addresses on the infected 
machines). With return-path verification, they will be forced to use an 
address of the ISP they are connecting through or some other domain that the 
infected machine can use. That creates much stronger accountability.

>  > It is sort-of an unintentional side-effect, as SPF is not meant to be
>  > an anti-virus technique, but hey....it is a nice side-effect.
>
> Except that it doesn't work.

It works against current worms. It prevents future worms from harming 
innocent third parties through forgery. Are you going to argue that having 
those benefits is a bad thing?

Philip Miller


_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg