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

[der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>]

> Viruses are spam?

Aren't they?  (Well, when they're in their email propagation form.)

Unsolicited?  Check.
Bulk?  Check.
Email?  Check.

Sure sounds like spam to me.

> What's truly amazing is how still no one can explain the advantage of
> SPF in fighting spam w/o completely redefining what "spam" is.

To the extent that it is implemented, it eliminates forgery in certain
places (envelope-from, I think it is, for SPF, though I'd have to go
back and check to be sure).

It's true that eliminating forgery will not, in itself, eliminate spam
(at least not in the long run, though it will make a dent briefly,
until non-forging spamware is written and roled out).  However, it
clears out a major obstacle to using reputation systems to block spam.
(Reputation systems don't stop spam because of forgery[%]; anti-forgery
systems don't stop spam without a reputation system.  But put the two
together and I can see it making a dent.)

[%] Actually, reputation systems that are driven off the pieces that
    are difficult-to-impossible to forge - I'm thinking mostly of
    DNSBLs queried for the sending IP or rDNS domain - have had some
    good effect.  This leads me to think that once we have a way of
    preventing, or more precisely detecting, forgery in other places
    (like the envelope-from domain), reputation systems can kick in
    there too.

> What a waste of time and energy this SPF et al stuff is.

Perhaps.  But if you think so, why aren't you ignoring it, rather than
wasting time and energy on it?

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
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 X  Against HTML	       mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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