EFF speaks out against MAPS

Control-Z has brought our attention to the latest EFF newsletter which speaks out against MAPS ^? and ineffective spam legislation. According to the EFF: "The rights of users to send and receive email must not be compromised for quick and dirty ways to limit unsolicited bulk email. Neither misguided and ignorant legislation, nor collusive, high pressure protection schemes, have a legitimate function or place in our online future " The EFF is reminding us that freedom isn't always easy. I feel much worse for those who haven't figured out procmail yet though.

Comments

Re:MAPS?

[pjrc]

...don't you have to opt-in to use MAPS?

Not if your packets happen to travel through abovenet. Vixie, founder of MAPS, is the CTO at abovenet, and they regularily drop packets based on MAPS RBL.

Not much choice there for end users.

MAPS has been highly effective for us

[ehintz]

I implemented MAPS and Procmail Sanitizer at my employers corporate gateway about 6 months ago. As the EFF article mentions, there is a concern for legitimate mail being blocked. My solution for this is to include my direct phone line, and a request to contact me if the mail is legit, in the error message sent to mail denied by MAPS. In about 6 months of operation, at a company with about 120 users, we block on average 150 messages per day, with an all time high of 262 in one 24 hour period. I have yet to get a phone call from ANYONE, spammer or otherwise. Meanwhile, users who were getting 10-15 spams per day are now down to 1-2, sometimes none.

Frankly, I've found MAPS to be highly effective. I expected to occasionally toss out legit messages, which was why my direct line is included in every bounce, but MAPS has been considerably better than I could have hoped for. With proper setup and configuration it is quite easy to ensure that legitimate mail gets through with only a minimum of delay. MAPS has been a very worthwhile investment for our company, and our end users have consistently thanked us for implementing it. Likewise, Procmail Sanitizer has stopped all kinds of trojans and viruses cold at the gateway-even catching new ones before being publicized. Although we don't use Outlook, we still find it useful to stop the stuff, and I can't fathom anyone running an Outlook environment without Procmail Sanitizer. Good stuff.

A solution

[SirSlud]

So here's my idea:

Requirements:
- mail servers would have to know if a message is being sent to many users, or [threshhold]
- mail servers would have to be able to decrypt addresses against a local private key specific to your email account (not your pwd, for security considerations, i think)

So, now you give you email address out to orgnizations (basically, anyone who wishes to enter a dialog with you in a one-to-many fasion) as hr435sd45kfjd@sirsonic.com (your mail client would support the ability to encrypt your normal email user name against this private key)

Now, here's the kicker: /included/ in this encryption is a timeout value. So, you might trust futureshop.ca, and give them an email address with your user name and a timeout value of 2 years, but they can't modify that value, due to the encrypted username-timeout combo on the email address you give them. And you'd give www.hotbabes.com a one month timeout .. if you dont find yourself on a zillion other lists, maybe you give them another with a 2 year timeout. Otherwise, maybe you change to 4 months. Basically, it's about EMBEDDING a timeout communication priviledge in your contact information, without giving the sender the ability to alter that timeout.

So, what has to be done? Does this work? I think once you wrap peoples heads around the idea of a timeout on communication privs, people who love this .. basically, you could say to anyone, "If this relationship works out, I'll give you lots more time to talk to me, but for now, you have a month to sell to me the notion that you are responsible with my contact information."

Am I on crack? I think its a good idea.

Silly EFF

[seebs]

Freedom means the government can't tell you to shut up; it doesn't mean I have to listen to you.

Freedom of speech is *harmed* by spam; it is harder and harder to talk to people, because more and more of them need a variety of local blacklists, buggy procmail rules, or other harsh filters, just to use their mailboxes *at all*. My friend can't email her dad, because the first time he checked his mailbox, he had a thousand pieces of spam.

That's not free speech. Free speech is the right to say things that people don't like - not the right to say things at no cost to yourself, to people who don't want to subsidize you, in their private space.

EFF position on Junk Fax?

[Sodium Attack]

I wonder if the EFF also believes that junk faxes should be legal--even though the anti-junk-fax law was upheld as constitutional when challenged on First Amendment grounds.