[Asrg] valid address lists revisited

[Markus Stumpf <maex-lists-spam-ietf-asrg at Space.Net>]

I have stumbled over the idea of adress verifiers this morning.
The arguments against them so far have always been that spammers
could use those services to clean their lists or retrieve lists of
valid recipients.
Now, with the current situation wouldn't it be a benefit to have
a query service like

   Q:joe at example.com
   A:OK

   Q:joe at example.com
   A:F:jane at example.net

(The F: could mean "forward to jane at example.net aka send it there
instead of joe at example.com).

Currently, with all the spam networks of thousands of hosts, spammers
really don't care about hammering dictionary attacks against SMTP
servers (maybe it's just me, but I "feel" like they are increasing
recently). Giving them a chance to find out which addresses exist
would not really change much for the existing recipients or the targets
of dictionary spams but it would save all of us a big portion of
mail to non-existant users and a lot of bounces stuck in the queue
and also a lot of bounces to faked sender addresses.

Is "don't tell the spammers whether an address exists" still true
for todays situation?

	\Maex

-- 
SpaceNet AG            | Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 | Fon: +49 (89) 32356-0
Research & Development |       D-80807 Muenchen    | Fax: +49 (89) 32356-299
"The security, stability and reliability of a computer system is reciprocally
 proportional to the amount of vacuity between the ears of the admin"

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