Re: Process's PreciseMail AntiSpam Gateway - any experience so far ?

From: Mike Bartman (omni_at_foolie.omniphile.com)
Date: 09/29/03 

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 15:00:34 -0400

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 12:41:44 +0200, "Rik Steenwinkel"
<rsteenw@xs4all.nl> wrote:

>Leaving the mail fees issue for a moment, Don's mail protocol still
>has merit without it. As said, it allows the recipient much greater
>control whether to accept (rather: collect) a message or not.

That means the user has to do more work, and take more time, and could
STILL get SPAM, since SPAMmers tend to lie. The user might think it's
a message he wants to read, request it, pay for it, and then find that
the headers were inaccurate and he just got to pay for junk mail. I
don't think that's a benefit...

There's a mail add-on for servers out there now that solves at least
some of the problem of SPAM by preventing delivery of messages from
senders who lie about their return address. It's called TMDA, and you
can read about it at:

http://tmda.net/

The basic idea is that when mail gets sent to you, your server sends
back an address verification before you get to the mail. No
verification and the mail is deleted. If the sender does respond to
the verification request, the message is released and is delivered to
you, and that sender is marked as "verified" so they won't have to go
through the process again. You can stick a given sender in the
"verified" category to start with if you like, so your friends and
family don't have to verify even once.

Since SPAMmers tend to lie about their address, they will tend to get
blocked completely by such a system. It's not too much trouble for
the valid senders either, and doesn't involve any huge new internet
bureaucracy to handle billing at various levels. It doesn't even
require any new protcols or changes to the way firewalls are
implemented. Oh, and it's free...what's not to like?

Ok, SPAM could still get past this system, with a smart enough bulk
e-mailer, but it would require the SPAMmer to give a valid return
address...something most are not willing to do.

There's also a problem for commercial mail systems, such as those at a
company that needs to accept mail from the world at large (new
customers for instance), without any inconvenience to them (any
barrier to entry costs you clients...). For them a better system is
one that filters based on content...the smarter the better.

-- Mike Bartman
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