[LINK] NYT/SMH: To beat spam, pay to send email

[Jim Birch]

Aren't there a set of good enough techniques for defeating spam 
already?  Most mail systems are actually very spam-friendly.

Try

Whitelisting friendly domain name and source ip pairs.
Blacklists for open relays, known junk sources.
Greylisting anything suspect, like bad headers, mail from non MX 
sources, rapid multiple mails from single sources, dictionaryish 
addressing, etc.
Baysian filtering (lastly).

Using a set of these techniques would eliminate nearly all spam.  
Attempts to get past these makes spamming harder with fewer, more 
visible sources.

The main problems seem to me
1.  Getting up to date smtp servers.   Software with comprehensive 
antispam features are uncommon or experimental.  The usual culprits, 
cost, knowledge, compatibility and legacy issues make change slow.
2.  Linking client and server, like getting address books to whitelists, 
junk button sends info to server.  These would make the antispam systems 
run smoothly.

Digital signing offers little advantage (spamwise) over simply checking 
for MX records, and would be insufficient on it's own.  Systems still 
get compomised.  It's an engineering overkill that will produce it's own 
problems and costs.  No wonder billg at ms thinks it's the future.

Waiting for governments to fix it is pretty well guaranteed to be 
useless as well.   I support spam laws, going after vendors as well as 
spammers (etc) but, given the international lassez-faire nature of the 
net, these aren't likely to produce a comprehensive result in the near, 
medium or long term.  A lot of people are too clueless, there are too 
many vested interests, privacy issues, etc.  Although  I'd personally be 
happy to support medievil punishments for spammers, I reckon the DIY 
solution is more effective.

I'd rate establishing and promoting an antispam best practice RFC highly 
useful.  If the makers of mail systems evaluated themselves against it 
they would eventually produce systems that are not spam-friendly.  As 
these get common spamming becomes progressively harder and eventually 
the costs will outweigh the return.

-- 
Jim Birch

--
 Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
    - Henry Louis Mencken