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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.
The ISP opts-in, the user doesn't.
Furthermore, a user on an ISP that got listed on MAPS certainly doesn't.
Everyone hates spam, everyone wants it to go away... unfortunately, no one has any really good answers as to how it should happen.
Making falsified return addresses a punishable offense has the side effect of rendering anonymous communications illegal.
Any legislation created will boil down to one thing: the Balkanization of the Internet.
I see a big market in e-mail wizards that will help guide you towards writing e-mail that's legal in every country in the world if anti-spam bills start getting passed.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
The whole point of fighting for freedom is that it is even the freedoms of those we don't like that we are preserving, or those we wished would have no freedom. Freedom is only as great as its lowest common denominator.
So yes, I think that this is reasonable and a laudable position to take. Censorship is especially a lowest common denominator freedom-- who decides the standards on which things are censored? How are false accusations handled? Can that censorship be turned on you or I?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
For the uninitiated, procmail is a fantastic tool. To learn more about it, check this link for how-tos, documentation, tutorials, and other spam-fighting tools.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
How the hell will I be able to take vacations across country with out good maps? This is a conspiracy by the airline companies to increase sales of tickets since Sep. 11! Fucking bastards!
saru mo ki kara ochiru
I highly reccommend all people go out and use sneakemail link.
This is a great utility for stopping spam while not interfereing with your normal email.
It gives you unlimited disposable email addresses to give out whenever you need an email for a website.
If you dont want email from that address anymore, you can turn it off.
On the other hand : Spam is meant to market a good or service. Therefore there must be some way to get in contact with the spammer, otherwise their spam would be ineffective. a task force needs to be created which smacks spammers upside the head with fines, or just plain shuts them down.
Spam should be legal, as long as they include a valid return addy, and have a way to remove people (for real)
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.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
"When they took away the Fourth Amendment, I said nothing. I didn't deal in drugs. When they took away the Sixth Amendment, I said nothing. I was innocent. When they took away the Second Amendment, I said nothing. I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken away the First Amendment, and I can say nothing." -author unknown
Your right to send mail stops at my mail server, I can refuse to accept mail based upon anything I feel like, including irrational reasons.
A few years ago, I came onboard at a small company just in time for their mail server (Exchange 5.0) to get blacklisted (by ORBS, I think). It sucked at the time, but if we hadn't gotten blacklisted the open relay would have remained open for a long time (the problem prompted our move to qmail). Once I closed the open relay and informed ORBS, we were quickly removed from the list.
In theory, I have no problem with the concept of these blacklists. The use of them is voluntary. From what I've heard, there may need to be some serious discussions about how they gather their data and their procedures for getting off their blacklists, but the concept seems to be both effective and practical. Also, mail providers should be up front about their use of these lists so that users can choose to use an "unprotected" mail server if they choose.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Not true...it is not difficult for an ISP to set up the use of things like MAPS RBL on a user by user basis.
Jeff
As long as there is sufficient notification and user choice, then there's nothing wrong with MAPS. It's only when their somewhat strong-arm tactics are combined with ISP coercion that the user really has a problem.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's a shame to see MAPS and collective protection schemes dumped into this list of "bad things." Like most geeks, I don't like everything that MAPS does and I'll admit that I've even been on the wrong side of the ORBS cluestick in the past. However, I believe the concept of collective protection is a good one. If there's a problem with ISPs using systems like that to block legitimate mail, then customers who want to receive said mail won't be with them for long. There are natural market pressures at work to provide what the most important people (the end users like our friends and family) want.
Like most of you, I have a pretty potent procmail script, but I have to say I've probably invested an absurdly significant amount of time in my labor of love getting it just right. If I were less of a geek, I might tend towards finding a group of like-minded mail readers and collecting our resources together. If evantually our creation became a widely recognized and used method of mail filtering, great! Then that's the choice of every sysadmin and every participant (by the merits that they all pay his/her salary) to be behind that shield. Nobody else has the right to tell me I have to accept socket connections from them if I don't want to.
Rob Carlson
An issue the article fails to address is that the provider subscribing to a given blacklist may choose how to handle that information. Automatically rejecting emails is only one choice (and happens to be what we use where I work). Another option is to merely flag messages from blacklisted addresses, so that they can wind up in a lower priority "junk mail" folder that is still manually reviewed. Yet another option, the worst of the bunch and also the only one mentioned in the article, is for a server to silently discard all blocked mail with no error being returned.
Since when does anyone, anywhere have the right to send email? Since when does anyone have the right to have their data go over a network that they don't own? If someone wants to drop the letter 'P' from every packet that goes over their network, last time I checked, they still have that right. And if they don't want to carry your email, for whatever reason, last time I checked, they have that right.
And the EFF wants to get rid of your rights... sigh..
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I'm not going to couch this discussion in terms of "freedom", because it has little to do with (it. Anti-spam laws are indeed an infringement on our freedoms, as I will show, but that's not the most productive way to think about the issue.)
The arguments against spam mainly consist in the fact that spammers are ostensibly using the resources of end users and ISP's without their permission. This is simply false.
When you set up an internet MX, you are implicitly agreeing to a certain set of unwritten rules. Essentially, the rules are that you must relay any and all mail from and to your customers, except as specified in their user agreements. If they agreed to have every e-mail with the word "sex" in it blocked, then you can go ahead and do that. But if the user agreement the both of you are bound by includes no specification of what types of mail are and are not acceptable, then you must relay EVERYTHING your customers send and receive.
Why?
Because this is how the internet works. *I* control who I hand my e-mail address to, and thus who can send to me. It is not my ISP's business to arbitrarily block inbound e-mails for me. Rather, it is my resonsibility to control the availability of my address, and to deal with any and all mail I receive, regardless of source or desirability.
Imagine the consequences if these rules were discarded wholesale. If intermediary mail relays blocked transmission based on arbitrary whim, the entire structure of e-mail communication could collapse. Remember also that "spam" is not an objective label. I get e-mail adverts that I don't really want, but occiasionally I find something very interesting in them. Here, I'm speaking of mails from vendors I've done business with who are sending my "specials" and whatnot evevn though I didn't ask for it. Fundamentally, these are every bit as much "unsolicited commercial e-mail" as those ridiculous offers for cheap toner! If one is outlawed, so is the other, and the two "perpetrators" would be subject to the same penalties.
If you want to get rid of spam, replace SMTP. Create a system where addresses can be "authorized-only", similar to how ICQ can work: to receive mail from someone, you must authorize them to send to you. Under the current system, however, any attempt to stem the flow of spam will harm the proper operation of internet communication more than it will help. You can't run a mail relay that's selective, that's not how it's supposed to work, and things will break down if that's not how things DO work. Putting people in jail for sending mail over a system DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SENDING MAIL is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like arresting people for driving on the road because the locals didn't like the paintjob on your car.
I hope I made some sense here.
MoNsTeR
'blackbox' solutions are dangerous .... avergage users will never be able to infer what goes on behind the scenes. Far more useful would be a 98% successful (my guesstimate at what an acceptable fail rate should be) intelligent, learning filtering system on the client end .. where you can just scan-the-spam topics and make sure you're not missing anything important.
.. ie, you can provide email addresses that somehow 'hide' your real email address and some timeout value, such that only email servers on your end could decrypt the address and figure out if that communication priviledge has 'expired'. I think mail servers would have to know if a mailing was a 'bulk' or 'single' mailing .. single mailings could accept normal email addresses, but multiple mailings would require these encrypted addresses with built in time out values.
It would be much easier to tackle this problem if a 'pseudolution' (spam is, by its very nature, not 100% solvable) is rolled out with the next generation mail protocal. To this end, does anyone know if there are any current undertakings addressing a next generation email protocol capable of more interaction/configuration from a client?
One VERY nice feature I'd like to see is email addresses with embedded timeout values in them
I havn't thought TOO deeply about it, as you can tell, and I'm not much of a privacy/encryption expert, but can anyone articulate a set of rules based on the above postulation that is technically feasible?
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
ehintz
MAPS is opt-in, but only on a mail-server level. for users who get mail from an IPS's mail server, they often have no say in the decision. what's more, MAPS (i believe) only works on site-level blocking, nothing with finer granularity. for example, on sites i run, i block mail from *opt-out*@*. MAPS is also somewhat heavy-handed about how they decide to add people, and what it takes to get off the list.
overall, though, i don't really see the argument for MAPS as a rights violation, the way EFF is talking. i choose not to go that route because i think i and my users want more fine grain controls over who we don't want to talk with.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Errr ... I think I'm offtopic, but to hell with karma.
It seems like a really nice feature for an email client would be something like the ICQ feature that auto-ignores people that aren't on your list. Your email client could auto delete email from people that aren't in your address book. I guess filters could be used to do this, but it's not obvious for the 'common users', like Grandma (:
There could/should also be a way for the email client to tell the mail server "hey, stop sending me mail from X@X.X". That way you cut it off at the source and it stops messing with your bandwidth. The server could also build a list of ignored email address and domains and stop responding to their requests all together for all users. This could become hurtful, putting control into the user's hands a bit, but somehow I think it would do more good than harm. It would need lots of revision, but I don't have the time or energy to care (:
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
90% of the spam could be eliminated by blocking port 25 access for individual (read "non-business") accounts. If users were forced to go through their ISP's SMTP server, the ISPs would be able to quickly detect and shut down spammers. The spam-spew programs would not work as they would not be able to directly connect to their victims' SMTP servers.
Even though I run my own mail server, I relay through my ISP's SMTP server and it's just not a big problem -- and I'm one of the most vocal opponents of needless port blocking (e.g., "We blocked your port 80 because someone else has Code Red...").
SMTP is a protocol from a more innocent time. No one envisioned anyone being so unethical as to steal other people's bandwidth to advertise porn, get rich quick schemes, and online gambling. But since we are stuck with SMTP, we need to employ technical means to make up for its deficiencies.
The EFF's anti-MAPS stance has little to do with careful consideration of the legal and ethical issues involved, and a great deal to do with the fact that EFF honcho John Gilmore has landed himself on multiple spam blacklists, and been booted off at least one ISP (Verio) for intentionally running a wide-open relay.
Gilmore's stance is pretty straightforward: running an open relay was a good thing in 1987, so of course it must still be best practice in 2001.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
My opinion diverges from the EFF's on this point. I would argue that using reputable services that maintain a list of open and abused mail relays to filter incoming mail is a responsible decision. The combined benefits of reduced volume of incoming spam, and the enforcement of responsible mail server configuration benefits not only local users, but the Internet as a whole.
Out of the box, most modern mail servers configure themselves to prevent the relaying of mail. What we are fighting by using services such as MAPS are legacy systems and new servers that come online and are misconfigured. It is simply negligence to be operating an open relay in today's Internet. That negligence needs to be challenged. We can ultimately get the upper hand on the abuse of open relays this way, and I would support Internet wide adoption of the use of such services as a Best Current Practice.
With regards to my users not receiving mail, it is our company policy to individually handle each complaint related to our mail filtering to benefit our customers. We will almost always explicitly permit mail from servers that we know are legitimately trying to reach our users. We will also send a courtesy email to the administrators of the open relay to inform them of the situation. This isn't about maliciously blocking every relay out there, to the detriment of our users, this is about encouraging a trend of improved mail server administration. Responsible implementation of these kinds of controls on unsolicited email benefit everyone.
Cheers
If you want to use it do if you do not then don't.
If we are talking about ISP users who do not do their own sendmail setup that might be a diferent matter, but the ISP could simply offer each user a choice when they sign them up:
1) We will try to filter spam from your email
2) We leave your email compleatly unfiltered
As long as people have a choice what is the problem. And if ISPs don't give the choice then the problem is with the ISP not MAPS and friends.
The Internet is not regulated as a telecom service. The FCC doesn't regulate ISPs, just the telecom services they buy. Nobody regulates mail servers. It's a free market, and it works. Now in a free market, you have competition. If your ISP uses MAPS and you don't like it, then you're free to go elsewhere. If your ISP is RBL'd, you're free to go elsewhere. There are lots of free e-mail services out there. See for instance http://www.emailaddresses.com/ . Now I wish my own "primary" e-mail provider, the one I ping many times a day, used one of these services, because I'm spammed to death and sick of it! If somebody couldn't get through, they almost certainly would find another way to reach me. Like I have a phone too, not to mention other e-mail addresses.
So given the fact that there is no anti-spam legislation, and negligible likelihood of effective anti-spam legislation within the next few years, then the free market approach (you know, the one the spammers cite to block anti-spam legislation) is to allow anti-spam filters at the ISPs. The ISPs will install them if it's good for business, and block spammers if being blackholed is bad for business.
Indeed one of the reasons that the Internet is not regulated as a "telecommunications service" is that it does not offer to provide transport of information "without change in form or content" -- an ISP may change things, of which blocking spam is one example. It would be quite a different story if a telecomm provider attempted to do the same thing -- their mission is to pass the bits unchanged, down there below layer 3.
And please don't tell me how easy it is to build an anti-spam filter on your private mail server. 99.9% of end users do no not run mail servers; ISPs, who have full-time bandwidth, run them for us.
My step-mother called me frantically the other day because all email to her was being bounced. I did some checking and found that my subnet had been added the the MAPS Dial Up User List . The addition of DUL to the MAPS database means I am treated the same as a spammer even though I am not doing anything wrong.
_ fa q.html
I reconfigured exim to use my ISPs SMTP server as a smart host and all was well. Until I receive the following message which basically says that my server is an open relay.... Its not... Now my step-mother thinks I am a mail abuser... I can only guess what she think of that...
From: Abuse Investigation Team [mailto:abuse@adelphia.net]
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 1:59 PM
To: *
Subject: RE: email problems
Thank you for forwarding this information to us. However, the bounced
message you received indicates that the sender is being blocked due to the
originating IP address being listed in MAPS database. MAPS is a database of
domains and IP addresses that have been found to have either open mail relay
servers or are spam friendly. Adelphia, like many other ISPs, has
instituted MAPS as a means of filtering spam to lower the amount of
unsolicited email that reaches our customers.
Adelphia is unable to unblock the sender of the email. The domain
responsible for the IP address being blocked will need to follow the link in
the bounced message and take the appropriate steps as outlined by MAPS to
have their domain and/or IP address unblocked. For more information
regarding MAPS, please see their website at http://www.mail-abuse.org
Sincerely,
Abuse Investigation Team
Adelphia Communications
1-814-260-3961
abuse@adelphia.net
http://powerlink.adelphia.net/policies.html
http://powerlink.adelphia.net/policies/security
Sender : *
Date : 10/5/2001 5:48 AM
---
because of MAPS my email began bouncing.
* *
-----Original Message-----
From: Mail Delivery System [mailto:Mailer-Daemon@chase.org]
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 8:13 AM
To: *
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. The following address(es) failed:
*:
(generated from *):
SMTP error from remote mailer after MAIL FROM::
host mx5.dc2.adelphia.net [24.48.57.12]:
553 5.3.0 Open relay - see http://www.mail-abuse.org/
------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------
Return-path: *
Received: from smtprelay.abs.adelphia.net ([64.8.20.11]
helo=smtprelay3.abs.adelphia.net)
by loki with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian))
id 15p7NF-0001tp-00
for ; Thu, 04 Oct 2001 08:13:09 -0400
Received: from * ([*]) by
smtprelay3.abs.adelphia.net (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15)
with SMTP id GKOJBX02.Q4L for ; Thu, 4 Oct 2001
07:45:33 -0400
From: *
To: *
Subject: test
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 07:44:08 -0400
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400
Importance: Normal
test
* *
*
-==-
So here's my idea:
/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.
.. 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."
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:
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
Am I on crack? I think its a good idea.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I just got out of a battle of wits with one of our sales guys who couldn't receive mail from a potential client - the guy on the other end kept insisting that it was because *our* isp didn't have "anti spam" software, whereas the email headers clearly indicated that they were being rejected because the OTHER guy was blacklisted, he even admitted to them having a problem with their server being used for spam "a year ago", yet they were still failing relay tests as of early this month. I just told our sales guy there was nothing *I* could do, he'd have to get a hotmail acct or something that will take mail from anybody.
/sure/ aren't going to get away with blaming it on me!!
It's like another case of IIS users who get wormed and don't know or care what to do about it - and they
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If it's bad to share a list of open relays, wouldn't sharing a procmail script be just as bad?
If I tell you how to automatically delete email with subjects like "MAKE MONEY FAST", how am I different from someone telling you that some ISP has an open relay? After all, if I publish a list of subjects that spammers are likely to use, am I not denying their right to send me email just as if I didn't accept email from their domain?
And BTW, I use spambouncer (a set of procmail recipes) to block spam. It's trapped 190 email messages since October 1. I think 3 have slipped past.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Should it be illegal for an ISP to use MAPS without an individual user's consent? It occurs to me that it should be illegal. Right now, it is a federal crime to interfere with regular mail delivery. Why should e-mail be any different?
If an ISP wants to offer me a service -- that I opt-in to -- to limit the amount of junk mail I receive, then that's fine. But it seems highly arrogant of an ISP to decide what should or should not go in my mailbox.
The more I think about this issue, the more I think it should be a federal crime to interfere with the delivery of e-mail.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
How do you think that women in the workplace feel when they get "Cum slurping coeds hot for you!" e-mail just because they answer the mail for sales@companyname.com -- which is posted on the company web page? Users can't participate in newsgroups without some kind of painful REMOVETHISBEFOREREPLYINGTOME crap tossed into the middle of their e-mail address. You can't participate in list servers. You can't put your e-mail address on a for-sale web site. All you have to do is become some kind of reclusive hermit, carefully hiding your e-mail address, just to the spammers don't harass you to the point of insanity.
Oh, by the way, you also can't use your initials since spammers have taken to programs that "guess" your e-mail address if it is one or two letters long. I know. I run a mail server.
The free speech argument isn't invalid its just impractical for most end users. Secondly it is being applied in the following way by the EFF:
- "ANYBODY has the right to say anything to YOU"
and not in what most people consider free speech, which is:
- "ANYBODY has the right to say anything in a public forum."
These are NOT the same thing. You get into the whole "I'm paying time and money becuase idiots keep sending me spam". Email is personal communication (uni or multi cast) it is not broadcast. If people wish to broadcast they should do so in public forums - er, like this one!
It's still an issue if an ISP blocks somebody you do want to hear from - but this is somewhat akin to the fact that millions of people around the world don't even have access to email, a telephone or even a decent postal service to even contact me in any way whatsoever.
Being black listed at least forces those areas that are to try and regulate their users. Of course Eventually this is likely to break down to requiring pretty intelligent software to determine what to block based on message content rather than sender behaviour - and even then people will still pay third parties (ISPs,M$) to perform this for them - how many pieces of software out there still use the default passwords...
.sig
What's wrong with voluntary collective solutions?
The problem is that they are NOT typically voluntary by the people to whom it matters -- the email recipients. If an ISP wants to offer a service to block spammers, then then it should up to the individual to opt-in to the blocking.
Right now it's a federal crime to interfere with the delivery of regular postal mail. Why should e-mail be any different? How would you like it if your apartment complex decided to root through your mail and arbitrarily decided what you could or couldn't receive?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
is my weapon of choice when it comes to dealing with spam. About 80 per cent gets caught by the "not addressed to me" filter and all the trash gets deleted from the server prior to download.
I work for a small ISP, and we tried very hard to keep our mail relay as open as possible so our users could set up mail at work, at the office and other places where they may have a different connection to the net. We did and still do run filters on our mail server, to try and stop spam and virii, yet we were placed on ORDB and on ORBZ . The whole we were placed on these lists was not due to anyone complaining about spam originating or being relayed from our server, but just because it had an open relay. In the end we closed the relay, which caused us to lose customers who could no longer send mail through us from their work or other places, but we were also losing customers when we were on these lists because people could not send mail to their friends and business contacts.
Most of these Blackhole lists do send a message back to the person trying to send the mail, and they often portray admins who run open relays as evil spammers or complete morons. Neither of these is true. We were trying to provide a service to our customers, and we work CONSTANTLY to keep the spam out.
Blocking or denigrating the ISP or admin of a mail server which happens to have an open relay that may get used for spamming is like blaming Boeing for the recent trade center attacks. They built the plane but they did not do the deed. We ran a mail server, but we did not spam people. Go after the spammers, and their backbone providers, and their corporate backers, not the little guys who get hurt by this the most.
In the wild there are no dumb lions tigers or bears. Only humanity subsidizes the continued existence of the stupid.
Dismay?! More like anger. Boycotting doesn't work. The fact that I haven't purchased any ``100% Legal Temple Kiff'' hasn't stopped the fscking emails from coming.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
From this part of the executive summary in the page:
"And anti-spam blacklists, such as the MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Blackhole List, the most popular), result in a large number of Internet service providers (ISPs) surrepticiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people [emphasis added by me]. This is because they block all email from entire IP address blocks--even from entire nations. This is done with no notice to the users, who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered."
I seem to recall some cases (can't put my finger on them at the moment) involving ISPs and hosting companies attempting to blackhole the address blocks of their competitors. Needless to say, a very nasty practice indeed. This is part of the reason I've never used the black hole lists.
I know mail filters aren't perfect, but I've always found good ones that worked sufficiently for my purposes. Yes, I know this doesn't reduce the technology threat posed to the infrastructure of the Net by mass spammers, nor does of it reduce the massive losses in bandwidth taken by companies dealing with major spammers on their and connected networks.
Does anyone have any specific case examples of MAPS abuse? I'd be interested to review these myself, if only to be sure I never associate myself (or my company, for that matter) with such orgs in the future. Are there any watchdog groups out there that keep tabs on this sort of thing?
Not if done correctly. Just make false addresses/false routing information illegal on COMMERCIAL mail. Why does a company need to do something anonymously, especially one that wants me to buy something?
Wow.. it's about time the EFF finally put up the forefinger of logic and said "hey, wait a sec" in regard to the anti-spam movement. This has to be one of the most often grossly exagerrated problems anyone ever cites -- receive a few unsolicited emails and your inbox is "filled" with spam. And so off you go to champion hamstringing the the email system, banning ISPs, etc, etc. I am as annoyed by spam as the next guy. But I understand that any time I receive any piece of unsolicited email it is because *I* supplied my email address to the spammer - either directly or indirectly. There are a number of methods an individual can use to reduce the amount of spam received that are quite effective. These days I get more annoying crap from friends, co-workers and other associates than spam. I'm amazed at how some people can overlook all of the chain letters, images, flash movies and other crap that truly does chew up their resources and then go ballistic when they receive one piece of email that can technically be classified as spam.
Here's where the whole thing gets messy. Yes, it's expected that email that is sent should be received. But the Internet isn't regulated like that, so it's not really a right. I had a big long spiel about this and the Usenet Blackhole list a while back.
The point is that if your ISP is blacklisted, there's usually a good reason for it. It's because they don't control spam like they should, and thus they degrade email service for many many people. The blackhole list is designed to be a wake up call, and it usually isn't used until repeated requests to fix the problem have been ignored. If you find your ISP on the blacklist, complain to them to fix the problem that got them there. Either that, or switch to an ISP that isn't on the list. It's not your right to send email that's curtailed, it's the privilege to send it through that ISP that's restricted. Complaining about the lists themselves won't accomplish anything.
ISPs who have contracts that don't allow them to block email don't use the RBLs, but many ISPs specifically retain the right to block email if they need or want to. As companies, it's in their interests to protect their bottom line, and spam email is a bandwidth and storage killer. We won't see those lists go away until a better way of stopping spam comes along.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
It IS voluntary... the customer continues to pay the ISP each month for service.
If an ISP decides that "the cost of accepting mail from $ROGUE_SENDER_NETWORK is too high for me to accept", that's the ISP's decision, not the end user's. If you want "unfiltered" mail, you should be prepared to pay MORE for that service, because it costs your ISP more, in terms of bandwidth, disk space, etc.
Sure you can. Change to an ISP that doesn't use MAPS. Free market economy at work. No company HAS to do what you tell them to. Find one who behaves the way you want them to.
Mailtraq. Good software. It has no trouble handling offices with 1,000 boxes and can hook up to any provider using SMTP or POP. Good rules sets, accounts, fairly easy to set up, blah blah blah. A search on Google will bring back a lot of third-party info on the software, its configuration and more.
woof.
...except I can already hear nothing (because your message is lost in the thousands of spam emails in my mailbox) and say nothing (because the line is clogged with traffic).
When we're trying to hold a useful meeting, and everybody's yelling and screaming to try and make themselves heard, the guy at the front pounding the gavel isn't trying to deprive me of the First. He's trying to insure that I still have the right to speak and not be drowned out. He's asking for silence to restore order, so that we can resume speaking.
The mailing lists hosted by the FSF don't use any spam filters. At all. Now, go look at this month's archives of the binutils bug-reporting list and wonder how they manage to get any work done. (I have to hope the individual developers use filters.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Then like I said... if an apartment complex decided that "the cost of accepting mail from J.C. Penney catalogs is too high for me to accept", should they have the right to just dump the catalogs into the trash and not give them to the recipients? Without even their knowledge? Just find another place to live, right?
Right now federal law says no -- you do not have the right to interfere with the delivery of postal mail. I see no reason why e-mail shouldn't be afforded the same protections.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I support the EFF (inc. with money) but I can't help suspect that John Gilmore's own personal desire to operate an open relay has significantly influenced the EFF into slamming MAPS and praising Brightmail. Has JG's machine just been added to MAPS or something?
I entirely agree that ISPs should not be filtering email without notice or consent and that "end-user" tools are the best solution, but I disagree vehemently that a spammer's right to "free speech" overrides my right to accept or deny data arriving at the edge of my network, for whatever reason I decide, including irrational reasons. I can and will use any tools at my disposal to control what enters (and leaves) my systems. The problem with end-user solutions that live in the mail client is that by the time spam is deleted, the resource cost has already occured. I much prefer to simply drop connections that I don't want; it still costs me a little bandwidth but I don't waste the disk space and processing cycles that I would if I accepted the spam.
Free speech for everyone is all very well, but the galling thing is that most spam is *deceptive*, using falsified return information or deliberately implicating other innocent third parties. I would settle for allowing all mail to come in iff I can puruse claims for fraud against those who won't play nice. Since this is unlikely to happen any time soon, I'll keep my blocking techniques, thank you very much, and I won't be shedding any tears over the "free speech" rights of spammers - I simply don't recognise any innate "right" to practice deception, especially when it's at my own expense.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
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.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I don't know how authoritative this is, but my old ISP (XMission in Salt Lake City) had a page listing attempts blocked by the MAPS rules. They were blocking somewhere about 10-20 thousand attempts per day on average, with regular spikes into the 40 thousand range and occasional spikes into the 70-80 thousand attempt neighborhood.
As a sanity check, they only flagged messages listed on ORBS and, for a while, only flagged messages listed on MAPS (until the spamload got too high). In 6 years, I got precisely one piece of mail that was ORBS-flagged that wasn't spam, and no non-spam with a MAPS-flag while MAPS flagging was in effect. Since ORBS is more aggresive in listing sites than MAPS is, this is sufficient evidence to me that at the very least the amount of non-spam incorrectly flagged by MAPS and/or ORBS was a small fraction of the amount of spam they were catching.
Trying to prevent spam is like trying to prevent the diffusion of flatulence through the air.
You can't.
But, human beings have the ability to reason and match patterns in history to pattern in planning. And if they see masses of spammers being investigated and tried and sentenced and punished, that's a pattern that will be strong in their history.
Spam is not a violent crime. The inability to intercept it is not a detriment to public safety. But our apathy has led to the feeling among spammers that they can get away with it. By showing them they can't, they will for the most part stop trying.
And it's very easy to enforce. Every spam necessarily includes directions on how to contact those who would profit from your participation. And they need to stay there in order to collect your request. So every spam is a notice to the authorities to go to this place and arrest these people. Their trial will sort out whether they are guilty or not.
--Blair
Huh. Most of my procmail-using friends started their antispam recipes by downloading one of the fifty or so publicly available ones, recommended for such a purpose. Then they tweaked as necessary -- I think some of them never needed to tweak. The resource collection you speak of already exists.
(I had to start from scratch, because I started using procmail way early.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If ISP's were owned and operated by governments for the purpose of delivering email, I'd agree with you. But because they're commercial entities who have an independent agreement with a user, I don't personally have a problem with blocking email.
ISP's provide Internet connectivity. If and when they provide a pop3 server (or something else) to relay people's mail, it's an added bonus.
I don't know if MAPS is the way to go or not, but IMHO anything criminal should come from the ISP breaking an agreement with the user - not just automatic determined by a government. There are lots of reasons why an ISP might not want to agree to deliver all email in the first place, and governments shouldn't require them to because of their business category. If there's an arrangement with users that says the ISP should deliver a person's email, and they don't carry that out, then there's a problem.
Hopefully that's a normal part of most ISP agreements, but I don't know for sure. I don't like it that lots of ISP's use MAPS without properly informing their users what's going on so people can decide.
No, because they can legally fire you for almost anything except the protected categories of race, religion, gender etc. It's called "at will" employment.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Since an apartment complex doesn't bear any of the burden for US Postal Service delivery, you're using a bogus argument.
but it sure does keep a lot of junk away from my mail server. I have tried to disable it, but as soon as I did that, tons of junk mail got through. I don't really care if it should filter a few wrong mails, the alternative for me would be not to use email at all.
In my opinion as a systems administrator (and, incidentally, contributor to EFF), you guys have lost the plot when it comes to spam.
RBLs, databases of open relays in particular, are excellent tools for preventing spam. They are content-neutral and are designed only to penalize systems that misconfigure their mail servers. I have seen numerous instances where customers or employees of organizations with misconfigured systems have successfully applied pressure to management to get the mail systems configured correctly.
Remember, there are often business pressures to maintain an open relay. Management doesn't understand the issue, so they're reluctant to expend resources on it. Customers balk at use of SMTP AUTH or POP-before-SMTP. The pressures, in short, point to a tragedy-of-the-commons type of situation.
Open relay databases change the balance of pressures. They enable victims of spam to provide feedback to the organizations that maintain open relays, telling them: if you don't stop enabling others to consume my resources without permission, then your ability to communicate with others will be negatively affected. They enable victims of spam to act as a bloc.
Example.com, my employer, enables our customers to use or not use MAPS' "RSS" open relay database at their discretion. Example.net, a site for which I volunteer, uses the ORDB open relay database for all users, for many reasons; but only after determining that the consensus of the users was for such a measure. [Domain names were changed here because I felt like it. They were real in the email I sent.]
Your suggestion of a boycott of spamvertised products is quite naive. The cost of advertising through spam is so low that it takes very few sales to recoup.
Your suggestion that the Constitution of the USA is relevant to RBLs also seems weak to me. Private entities are not generally bound by restrictions on the behavior of governments. As an owner and operator of network equipment, I have the right to deny others the ability to use that equipment to send advertisements at my expense. I'll refrain from quoting the hackneyed line about freedom, fists and noses, but you get the idea.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
I wouldn't, because I know I'd lose. If you work in the U.S.A., you might be well-served by reading up on employment law a little bit.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Also, I have learned the fine art of filtering(right).
I have a good e-mail filtering system in place and I rarely see more than one or two spams per day while it filters probably 30 in the same time frame. But I also send complaints to get the spammers shut down. That takes time, but it's necessary if we don't want e-mail to become as worthless as Usenet newsgroups.
however it is quite simple to just look over the absolutly obvious ie: "Cum slurping coeds hot for you!" and just get on with work.
Isn't that always the argument for spam? "Just hit delete" say the pro-spam advocates -- ignoring the hidden costs that we all pay in higher ISP fees. That may be a fine answer for you, but wait until some devoutly religious woman complains to personnel because she gets 10 porn spams per day at the sale@ e-mail address that she answers.
Having checked, I have to update this. The average is now about 20-40 thousand attempts from MAPS-listed sites blocked per day, with occasional dips down to 15 thousand or so. This out of an average volume of 200 thousand pieces of mail per day.
Imagine this - your employer tells you that you will be fired because you said "GET LOST!" to your boss. (freedom of speech)
Imagine this - your employer tells you that you will be fired because you said "YA MORON!" to a customer. (freedom of speech)
Imagine this - your employer tells you that you will be fired because they searched your desk and found cocaine. (freedom from unlawful search or seizure)
Imagine this - your employer tells you that you will be fired and you are not able to appeal the decision to anyone. (due process)
Imagine this - your employer tells you that because someone else says you stole from the company but won't tell you who. (freedom to confront witnesses against you)
Imagine this - the government says that your employer, a private citizen, can't fire you. (freedom of association).
Governments are more restrained than private citizens.
Your suggestion that the Constitution of the USA is relevant to RBLs also seems weak to me. Private entities are not generally bound by restrictions on the behavior of governments.
Federal case law on the anti-fax spam statute says otherwise. When it was challenged constitutionally in Destination Ventures vs. FCC under the 1st Amendment, it was ruled constitutional because it limited only unsolicited commercial faxes. Based on Supreme Court case law, the court felt it would be unconstitutional to limit any other form of fax-based speech, unsolicited or not.
So, while the anti-spam types say "content doesn't matter," the law says otherwise.
No. Saying "don't lie about your return address" does not equal "you must disclose your return address". "I don't want to tell you" is not fraud. And all it requires technically is something like an anonymous remailer (which even still allows for replies).
It's perfectly possible for someone to get unsolicited mail from someone, ask them to not mail them again, and get compliance for that request, while never revealing to the recipient who the sender is.
Assuming you have your facts straight, the court felt it would be unconstitutional for *the government* to limit non-commercial speech in that context. RBLs are a measure taken entirely by private entities. The government is not involved. Therefore, the First Amendment is unlikely to be applicable.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Exim allows MAPS and other DNS based black lists to be used to mark e-mails. Then procmail can be used to filter those e-mails. This I have found to be very useful.
Further, legslation should be in place that unsolicited e-mail gets an extra header "unsolicited: yes" or something like that so that I can filter better. Those that don't fill in this header should be liable for damages. Also, a flag for sexual content would be good as well.
Clark
Even when I've lived in high-rise apartments or private gated apartment complexes, the guy or gal who got my mail to me wore the USPS uniform.
A cool experiment would be to set up an e-mail address and try and see how much spam it can get.
Got friends?
- "surrepticiously blocking": I have not run across an ISP that won't
tell you they use MAPS
- "entire IP address blocks": The MAPS RBL and RSS lists list the IPs
of individual servers, not large blocks. The only MAPS list that
lists large blocks is the DUL (Dial-Up List), which lists IP blocks
of dial-up users (voluntarily contributed by ISPs to help block
direct-to-MX spam).
- "even from entire nations": IP blocks are only somewhat assigned
according to international boundaries (and see previous entry about
large IP blocks).
- "no notice to the users": Most ISPs will announce that they use MAPS
and other anti-spam methods to their users because it shows that the
ISP is trying to do something about the spam their users hate.
- "who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered": The
typical use of the MAPS lists causes messages to be rejected, so the
sender is notified that their message was not delivered.
Also, some server admins configure their mail servers to tag
messages instead of rejecting them (so they are still delivered, but
users can filter on the tag in their mail client).
And that is just the second paragraph.Email is not protected speech, anymore than snail mail is. Senders don't have the right to force recipients to read their mail. The owner of the recipient's mail box (the US Government in the case of US snail mail) has the right to decline to deliver some types of mail. There are quite a few things that the US Post Office won't deliver (including "suspicious" packages). A package may be suspicious because it has no return address and white powder leaking out, or it may be suspicious because of where it originated (be it a post office in New Jersey or a mail server at a particular IP address).
Another comparison can be made to the telephone system. I recently added a feature on my telephone service that blocks "unknown callers" (people, usually telemarketers, that don't allow their caller-ID information to be sent). Those calls are blocked at the carrier. The US Post Office and the telephone companies are "common carriers" and have to carry most communication, but they are allowed to block some. ISPs are not common carriers; they can refuse to carry whatever they don't like.
The MAPS RBL also rarely (if ever) blocks "legitimate" mail. The servers on the RBL are the servers for large spam houses that are repeat offenders and refuse to do anything about it. The RSS list does hit some legitimate email, but not much. These are lists of irresponsible mail servers. Just as it is irresponsible to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, it is irresponsible to run a mail server that allows third party relay.
There are some other DNS based blacklists that do get more "collateral damage" (sometimes intentionally). Guess what: they are not nearly as widely used as the MAPS lists. ISPs want to deliver legitimate email, because not doing so will cause unhappy customers (or no customers). However, at the same time, customers are screaming at ISPs to get rid of the spam, so each ISP has to make up its own mind as to what steps it will follow to answer the demands of customers.
It sits at the intersection of property rights, free speech and communications rights and privacy rights.
Amazingly, because of this, many of the people writing here with opposite positions may both be right.
I've written extensively on this and have a collection of essays on my web site, though they are not all endorsed by fellow EFF people. As you might expect, with such new and contentious issues, no group, not slashdotters and certainly not the EFF, finds itself of a single mind.
Those who have written that the first amendment applies only to government action are correct. However, the principles of free speech apply universally, if you defend them. Private actors do have their right to block speech, but this does not make such actions immune from criticism by free speech advocates.
Instead, I look to define good principles by which we private actors might govern ourselves. There are many good lessons in the free speech principles to which we have held governments.
Amongst the principles (not just in free speech) is the protection of the innocent. That you don't punish the bystanders to get at the guilty. Private actors usually have the right to do that, but it need not be lauded.
Unfortunately, and I think this sits at the soul of problems with MAPS, blacklists tend to operate that way. I know many are aware of this, but have dedided that blacklists are the only way, and so a few innocents must be punished to stop spam.
This is of particular concern when the area is communication.
People do have the right not to listen to any communication, but this is a very simple statement about a complex issue. There is much to be said about how they should exercise that right.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I am afraid I have to disagree with the latest EFF position paper. So
much so that my future contributions to the EFF will come under review.
Spammers are like terrorists. They prevent me from using email like I
want to, steal my time, and interfere with legitimate traffic. By
distracting me with misleading subject lines and addresses, they
interfere with my livelihood, as my work requires intense periods of
concentration.
IP blocks that allow spam are like countries which sponsor turn a blind
eye to terrorism. If they refuse to stop their spammers, then their
citizens must suffer by not being able to send email.
For instance, no one sending from China can send me email. Why? Because
China lets spammers run amok. If I allowed email from China, I would
receive 100 more spam emails a week. I know; I have tried it.
Filtering is a non-issue. The best filters that run no significant
chance of blocking legitimate email are those of AOL, and we know how
ineffective those are.
Brightmail makes me jump through hoops -- I don't want to spend my time
every day with it.
Spammers are terrorists, and IP blocks that allow spam should be treated
like countries which harbor terrorists. Forcing an airport to accept
airplanes (or even snail mail nowadays) originating in Afghanistan is
sheer stupidity; why is email any different?
To the people who say "it only takes a couple of seconds to delete, it
is worth it" I say -- WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY TIME?
Let people sign up for AOL if they want all legitimate mail at the cost
of mindnumbingly time-wasting stupidity.
So say I.
The EFF position is summarized by this statement: Specifically, any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
That statement is false. The right to speak does not include the right to have the attention of the listener. Would the EFF say that the mailroom at NBC that opens and filters Tom Brokaw's mail violates the right of the sender to reach Tom Brokaw? Hiring an ISP that uses blacklists is no different than having a mail room screen your snailmail.
The listener is free to delete an email without reading it that arrives at his box. He is free to automate this process. He is free to automate this process dynamically by using information from a blacklist or any other method he chooses including rolling dice, racial profiling, or astrology. He is free to choose an ISP that automates this process for him. He is free to choose an ISP that automates this process for him by using dynamic information from a blacklist. These freedoms are inherent in the first amendment's right to receive information. What is not OK is for the government to mandate a filtering process, since this violates the listener's right to receive speech as well as the right of the sender to communicate with a willing listener.
The right to free speech exercised by sending email is a right to attempt to attract the attention of the listener through that particular medium. It is not a right to obtain that attention (which would essentially be a right to involuntary servitude). The scenario that the EFF rightly fears is that the sender and recipient want the email to get through, but the ISP filters it in a way unknown to the recipient. The proper way to avoid this is to eliminate deceptive trade practices on the part of the ISP. All that is required is for the ISP to state it's filtering policy up front and adhere to it.
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.
I agree with you, but at the same time, this is a very tricky issue that impacts someone negatively no matter what you do. For a counter example, my dad can't email me at my work from his work, because my company uses a blacklist, and his work's clueless company has an open relay.
In general, I support the idea of getting people to close their relays, but there just doesn't seem to be much of a "helpful" attitude to getting them closed. All my dad knew was that sending email to me at work was "broken"... the small note inserted in the headers didn't tell him anything meaningful, and they didn't tell him to refer the problem to the postmaster. It was only after he forwarded me a bounced message (at another provider) that I diagnosed his trouble and told him to see his admins.
It seems that this approach to preserving free speech for some is limiting speech for others, even when they aren't directly responsible for the behavior that is being blocked in the first place. Maybe the strongarm is what is needed to effect a change, but there seems to be little help offered to the offending parties before they get blacklisted.
Just my $0.02.
Well, my college at the very least has a mail-room that distributes mail - the postal service dumps it off in big bags, and student employees sort and put it in students' boxes. It's still illegal to interfere with the delivery of mail, despite the school bearing the cost to do it (through paying the students' salaries).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's not voluntary if the ISP is a government-granted monopoly, like the cable company. And with the way things are going lately, most people only have a handful of ISP choices available to them; if they all have the same policies, there is no choice.
It's like saying AMD and Intel implementing some sort of filtering in their processors wouldn't be wrong, because hey, you can always make your own processor.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The ISP market is not nearly as free as you indicate, especially as dialup service fades away and is replaced by broadband. In any given area, there are generally a handful of internet providers, depending on infrastructure available. Especially in areas where there is no DSL available (a large percentage) essentially the only choices are DirecPC satellite service or cablemodem through a government-granted cable monopoly. It would be my opinion that cablemodem companies should not be allowed to use things like MAPS, as their status as a government-granted monopoly prevents them from being able to claim they are private businesses free to do as they please.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now I'm in doubt again.
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
I'd much rather have my ISP _bounce_ the message, informing the sender that I did not receive the message, than have to set up filters to delete the message once it reaches my computer. I can't bounce the message myself, because that would inform the spammer that my address is active.
There is a fundamental free speech right to be able to send and receive messages, regardless of medium. Unless that right is being abused by a particular individual, that individual must not be restricted.
If you're using an ISP that has been blocked due to allowing spam (or not helping to find the individuals who spam using the service), you can switch to another ISP that hasn't been blocked. You cannot use a spam-friendly ISP and expect to be able to send messages to users at other ISPs.
The shareholder is always right.
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.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
When someone stuffs junkmail into my physical mailbox, is EFF saying that is their free speech right? When I avoid getting my phone # / address listed in certain places to avoid snail mail and telephone spam, I'm not curtailing others' first amendment freedoms.
If someone wants to put a message up on a bullettin board in a public place describing their pyramid scam on how to "$$$MAKE MONEY FAST$$$!!!!", then maybe that's their first-amendment protected speech. But that protection ends at MY borders. When someone is in my HOME, they do not have full 1st amendment rights. If I don't like what they are saying, I can tell them to get the fuck out. I see no difference between my home, my physical mailbox, and my email inbox. In neither case is it a public place. No stranger has the right to force his way into my inbox, fill it with spam, and then say "You HAVE to hear me out, the EFF says it's my 1st amendment right!" Unh-uh, buddy, it don't work that way. My private home and territory are private and *I* decide what speech occurs in them. And I include my inboxes in my territory.
The EFF has picked the wrong fight here. Please, folks, I respect the good work you're doing upholding the Bill of Rights. But this one stands too much chance of alienating the techies who are the EFF's main means of support. Please, lay off. Not to mention the ridiculousness of supporting spammers, none of whom care about 1st amendment rights, and most of whom are flybynight scammers anyway. Please, EFF, find an underdog to champion who doesn't actually DESERVE to be an underdog.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
If you're using an ISP that has been blocked due to allowing spam (or not helping to find the individuals who spam using the service), you can switch to another ISP that hasn't been blocked. You cannot use a spam-friendly ISP and expect to be able to send messages to users at other ISPs.
You cannot use a spam-friendly telephone company, and expect to be able to make phone calls to customers of other telephone companies.
You cannot use a spam-friendly bank, and expect to be able to wire money to customers of other banks.
You cannot use a spam-friendly legal firm, and expect to be able to sue clients of other legal firms.
Need I go on?
Edith Keeler Must Die
essentially the only choices are DirecPC satellite service or cablemodem...
...or a dialup. I've seen no evidence that dialups are going to suddenly dissappear, even if they're becoming less important. Until the cable modem providers really do have a monopoly on internet access, they should be able to act as any other private business.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
This touches on a point that occured to me while reading the EFF newsletter. It would be nice to have some enduser preference statistics.
Anti-spam activists are often portrayed as some kind of out-of-touch net-nazi brotherhood by SPAMers and their supporters. They apparently hate commercial use of the internet and are hell-bent on depriving normal internet users from valuable information that they really want. At least, that's the impression I've gotten from reading some SPAMer's writing on the issue.
Oddly enough, I haven't ran in to one customer, co-worker, or client thats said "I wish I got more valuable information about marketing oportunities and special offers in my inbox". They usually say "I hate spam. How do I stop it?"
It would be interesting to give endusers the choice between protected/shielded/MAPS'd/etc service and wide-open email. I suspect it would provide data contrary to the SPAMer's points.
I disagree - the cable modem providers are still being given a government-granted monopoly on a certain method of internet access, which also happens to be superior to the dialup method. When the government grants such a competitive advantage, the company cannot consider itself a "normal" private company.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Systems administrators who will not adopt the suggested anti-spam policies find themselves unable to deliver their non-spamming users' mail to recipients who are on systems that participate in blacklisting.
The EFF, like many other groups, is incorrectly stating that MAPS is the organization doing the actual blocking of packets, not the ISPs. It is clear to me that if ISPs did not agree with MAPS' policies on what to block and with its history of questionable bans, then those ISPs wouldn't subscribe to MAPS. It is clear that ISPs see a benefit in using a blacklist, one that saves them money on bandwidth and support. Aside from the purely practical aspect, many feel very strongly about spam.
The EFF stated that they wouldn't support a blacklist if it blocked one legitimate piece of e-mail. Aside from the fact that this is impossible, they don't seem to understand the reason that MAPS works. It wouldn't work if spam-friendly ISPs were free to sign up spammers, without any fear of ALL their traffic being blackholed.. In order for a blackhole to work, you have to block ALL of their users' traffic. Yes, it sucks if you are that user.. however, it may teach you a lesson that it doesn't pay to have a spammer one IP over from you. If ISPs don't deal with their spam problems, they are free to watch all their users go away.
MAPS 'suggested anti-spam policies' are not overly demanding. They don't force ISPs to jump through hoops, they are reasonable requests to make. An ISP who subscribes to MAPS is saying, "I don't want to receive newsletters that are not confirmed opt-in. I don't want to receive mail from ISPs with open relays." Folks, that's not too much to ask for.
Yes it's a strong arm tactic, but it's one or the other - strong arm, or legislation. The EFF believes that filtering at the user's end is the right way to deal with spam. Bullshit. Filtering doesn't stop them from using up my bandwidth. Filtering doesn't stop them from spewing all over the net, wasting the time of support staff nationwide. Until every last AOL box is filtered from receiving a single piece of spam, there WILL be suckers responding to this shit, and the spammers WILL get paid. Filtering doesn't stop spam support services, spamvertised web sites, or spamware companies.
The EFF throws around that word, 'censorship,' like they don't know what it means. This worries me.. it is censorship if someone (correct me if I'm wrong, but censorship applies only to gov'ts) prevents you from voicing your opinion, or saying whatever you have to say. It is NOT censorship if I say to you, "I'm not going to listen to what you, or anyone from your ISP, has to say."
As for legislation, illegal censorship prevents speech based on CONTENT. Legal restraint of speech, such as junk fax laws, prevents speech based on the METHOD of the speech.
How do you think that women in the workplace feel when they get "Cum slurping coeds hot for you!" e-mail just because they answer the mail for sales@companyname.com
And you think men feel any better? Nobody likes porn spam.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Free speech for everyone is all very well, but the galling thing is that most spam is *deceptive*, using falsified return information or deliberately implicating other innocent third parties.
Canter & Siegel, perhaps the most notorious Usenet spammers, did not hide their identity until people began attacking them directly. Spammers did not go underground until the anti-spam community decided to attach a cost to playing out in the open. Spam was easy to block before the anti-spam crowd raised the stakes and sent the spammers off to devise ways to make their messages evade detection.
Of course, after five or six years of escalation, it is hard to tell what has affected what, or how effective current measures are, relative to the past.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Since I run my own servers, I have a right to choose who I will communicate with, and who I will decline to communicate with. I certainly don't want to receive spam from spammers, so I feel just fine about blocking it. Services like MAPS started out helping me do just that. However, it has turned into something else.
MAPS goes beyond just blocking spam. It attempts to influence other aspects of how business it performed. Examples of this include blocking an entire ISP just because a spammer connects through them, even if the spammer has a dedicated network connection with a static netblock registered via SWIP with ARIN. They also block mail from ISPs that don't host spammers, but host the web site mentioned in spam, even if the site owner was not the sender of the spam. They even go so far as to block things other than mail.
If a spammer is completely cut off, they just move on to the next ISP. They may even falsely represent what they are doing to make sure they get connected. In some cases they start their own ISP front operation to get backbone connections. But they do get back online, and they do evade for a while the information that blocks them, and we end up getting a little more of their spam.
If instead, we simply cut ourselves off from those spammers who we can reliably cut off (those that have a static netblock and stay with it), they won't be motivated to move on (as much), and our efforts to block them will be more effective for a longer time for us.
Some people know me as an avid anti-spammer who really hates spam. I really do hate spam. But I prefer not to have to keep chasing a moving target. If a spammer wants to settle down to a fixed location which I can block from my servers, I'm all for that. This is the way I want to block spammers. The trouble is, finding zone data that limits itself to just this is difficult.
Too many anti-spammers are aiming more to change behaviour and thought, than to just isolate themselves from spammers. As well intentioned as that may be, it is simply not going to work because humans don't really change very much. Most spammers are still spammers at heart (they may have quit for a while, but they are still spammers through and through). Most terrorist are terrorists for life. Most child molestors are child molesters for life. There are simply some bad people and we really can't fix that in most cases, however hard we try.
This doesn't address other kinds of spam like that which comes through open relays and that which comes from dynamic address pools for DSL, Cable, and dialup. Those still need to be dealt with in appropriate ways. The ISPs need to determine who definitely won't spam, and everyone else has to use the ISP mail server for outbound mail. Open relays can be blocked when they are found. Dynamic pools can be blocked when they are found if the ISP doesn't want to do it themselves.
And for sure, web sites with those insecure mailform scripts do need to be cleaned up. I block their outbound mail server.
I also block SMTP connections from servers which do not have valid reverse DNS. This has been very effective in blocking spam, including "spamhaus" operations (who probably can't get a decent admin to come work for them). So far not too many sites sending legitimate mail have this problem. So far this has resulted in 5 cases of legitimate mail being blocked. Of these, 3 fixed the problem, 1 did not answer, and 1 has Qwest for upstream and Qwest isn't delegating things to them correctly.
Postfix does support subject and header based string match blocking. But it is not terribly effective. I do use it for a few terms, but too often I find it rejecting legitimate mail, so I have to keep it lean, making it not so effective. Thus I do have to continue direct blocking mechanisms. I don't expect procmail to be all that effective in blocking spam, either, but it does have the advantage of being customizable to what you don't want to get.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Recently MAPS switched to a paid service, with the option of still being free for hobbyists (lots of /.'ers would qualify for that) willing to sign an agreement. Now I'm running a service which doesn't qualify as a hobby. And I was willing to pay for the service for a while. I wrote to them twice before the cutoff date of 31 July 2001, and twice again afterwards, about arranging services. I have never received a reply. So at this point I'm assuming the people at MAPS simply don't care. It seems to me they have a very arrogant attitude. So I'm just writing them off, and will be cheering when they finally become a dot.com.bomb.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Stanton McCandlish writes:
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all
non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
As an EFF member and supporter, I would like to state as clearly as
possible: You don't speak for me when you say this. I am opposed to
your position on spam.
You raise a number of valid points. The crux is that users might have
their mail filtered without knowledge. This is undesirable. Users
must be told what is happening with their incoming mail and under what
circumstances it can be bounced. However, it's fine for users to be
able to choose to use any filtering system they like; including ones
that have false positives (are there any that don't? even Brightmail
with its human intervention has them).
I personally don't use any spam filtering. My position on spam is
summarized at http://www.internet2.edu/~shalunov/nouce.html:
I do not wish to receive any unsolicited commercial email or
unsolicited bulk email (spam). I get on average 2.5 junk messages
a day (and several hundred real messages).
I never buy anything from a spammer. I never support a spammer in
any way. I never reply to spam.
I never disguise (munge, forge) my email address. (I find it
inconsiderate to people who wish to send me mail; if we break the
way email works, spammers win.) This doesn't apply to email
addresses that are actually mapped to more expensive or more
intrusive delivery mechanisms (fax, pager, etc.). I regularly post
to Usenet and to numerous openly archived mailing lists with my
real address.
I always report all my spam, including spam I get through numerous
mailing lists I am subscribed to (using Spamcop currently). I
often call relevant parties in addition to sending electronic
reports. I sometimes (rarely, because it takes time) place fake
"orders" based on information provided in spam.
This is my service to all people who use email. I consider this
service useful. (And I only spend seconds per day doing it.)
If you came here, you may be interested in my ideas on reporting
spam and uce.el.
However, ISPs are free to offer to their users optional spam-filtering
services or even make them part of standard offering that users can't
reject *as long as the users know how their mail is being treated*.
Blacklists have been an effective pressure tool.
ORBS et al. were what has really improved the situation with open
relays: Without pressure of legitimate mail being rejected, far fewer
people would fix their systems.
It's one right to refuse to accept mail from misconfigured systems.
If they act as an open relay (or, in fact, if I feel like it), it's my
right to not accept mail from them. If they are friendly to spammers,
it's my right not to do business with them.
I urge you to reflect this alternative point of view, which, I am
sure, is shared by many technically-minded members of the EFF in the
next issue of EFFector and on the website where this one-sided view is
presented as an opinion of EFF as a whole.
Sincerely yours,
--
Stanislav Shalunov
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject. -- Winston Churchill
-- Stanislav Shalunov
... have been repeated countless times.. by spammers.
;). There's a balancing act that must be performed here, so that the 1st amendment is treaded upon as lightly as possible, while still addressing the problem.
Did you know that IP blocks that have been on the RBL in the past, but have been long removed, are still largely useless because of ISPs that once upon a time installed local blocking rules based on RBL information, and never bothered to keep those rules up to date.
How is this MAPS fault? Any ISP that does this should know better.. Would it be a problem if I ran an ISP and blocked IPs on my own? Say, no packets to or from China? Of course not.. nothing wrong with that, unless my users start complaining. ISPs aren't a public service, they can do whatever the hell they want.
That's not to say they are a bad idea, but only that they impose prior restraint on speech (if they didn't they wouldn't be very effective!
Never said that spam laws aren't prior restraint.. of course they are. So are obscenity laws, and harassment laws. Can I follow you around all day shouting obscenities? No? But it's OK for me to do that to your inbox?
The legislators of anti-junk-fax laws decided that the costs of receiving the junk faxes was unfairly being borne mostly by the recipients, who have to pay for their paper and ink.
As opposed to the costs of spam, which are paid up front by the spammers, who are happy to pay for the bandwidth they use, abuse staff salary, and wasted time of all the recipients. Oh wait, spammers don't pay for any of that. Forget what I said.
Most email users do not pay extra for incoming emails, especially in the US. They would pay the same amount for their internet service, whether they receive no spam, or thousands per month. This cost/benefit analysis MUST be part of any anti-spam legislation, just as it was for the anti-junk-fax legislation.
Bullshit. Maybe you're not aware of how much it costs to run an abuse department, or how much bandwidth spammers waste. AOL estimated that 30% of their e-mail traffic was spam. In addition, processing of mail along with filtering spam takes up CPU cycles. If you think that ISPs just eat those costs without passing them along to the consumer, well, who's being naive?
In the US, it's true that most users pay a flat rate for Internet - the cost of spam is just rolled into that flat rate. However in many other countries, folks pay by the minute. I have received spam with 100, even 200k of attachments. In this case, the cost of spam is charged directly to the user.
The answer to this problem really has to be the oft-repeated "JUST HIT DELETE".
You've got to be joking.. this is a joke, right?
I was too generous in my original post. I don't believe spam should be a protected form of speech - It's actually harassment. Spammers should be charged with harassment. I have had to ditch e-mail addresses due to the amazing amount of crap in my mailbox. (20+ spams a day? Would you like to 'just hit delete' on those, while making sure not to miss any important ones? And if you tell me to filter them, that isn't, and shouldn't be the user's responsibility.)
I think the EFF is unfortunately right. If we allow independant groups who have no external accountability to create and administer lists like MAPS which, if used widely, can arbitrarily cut off a person's ability to communicate with the outside, we're setting ourselves up for very large freedom of speech problems.
If a person is too loud and someone wanted them silenced, getting them onto all the MAPS-like lists by way of pursuasion (in the future) might be a good method. Being able to silence that person on the Internet shouldn't be possible without public review -- that's why we have court systems for crimes.
MAPS is too vigilante for the EFF is what it comes down to for me, and unfortunately MAPS-like services are very useful but I think closing down spammers themselves is a much better long-term solution.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If you don't like it as a customer, take your business elsewhere. Simple as that.
Fact: There is no government-granted cable monopoly. There are two cable companies passing my house; I use one of them (AT&T), and my next-door neighbor uses the other (RCN). Municipalities have been prohibited by federal law from granting exclusive franchises since 1992; even before then, there were few exclusives. Financially, it is generally a lousy investment to be the second cable company in a given place, which is why overbuilding is so rare. But lack of competition does not equate to government monopoly.
But in any case, if you want to regulate an ISP because it is so good, then what else do you regulate? If it MUST by law deliver me ten pitches a day to enlarge my penis size or get a mortgage from some crook, then what else must an ISP do by law? It would be a victory for lawyers (since ISPs would need a lot of them) but most ISPs would simply go out of business rather than be subject to regulation.
Here's the email I sent to EFF yesterday:
...
From: Ben Reser
To: editors@eff.org
Subject: Re: EFF on Spam
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:01:35 -0700
On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 09:20:30PM -0700, Stanton McCandlish wrote:
> Public Interest Postion on Junk Email: Protect Innocent Users
>
> EFF Statement Regarding Anti-Spam Measures
>
> Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all
> non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
>
>
I disagree greatly with your statement about Anti-Spam. It is clearly
poorly researched. You may a number of statements that I find really
odd. It is unfortunate that because of your inaccurate stance I may
have to reconsider my continuing membership in EFF when my membership
comes up for renewell.
* System adminstrators are forced to adopt anti-spam policies. The only
policy MAPS or ORBS seeks to have other admins adopt on their systems is
to close their open relays and other ways for non-customers to inject
email into their mail servers. While this may be inconvient to some end
users it is not difficult to be sure and select the correct mailserver
to send your email. However, you make it sound like admins are forced
into filtering with MAPS or ORBS. This is absolutely untrue. The use
of any blocking system is entirely voluntary.
* 50% of ISPs use blocking systems like MAPS or ORBS. This may have
been the case in the past but most certainly is no longer the case.
ORBS has changed hands recently and has a very uncertain future. Mainly
because ORBS is controversial among administrators who feel that it's
proactive scanning is a violation of the internet norms of stayiing out
of other peoples systems. In the case of MAPS it has gone from a free
service to a pay service. I know that they lost me as a site that was
using them when they did this and I'm sure the vast majority of their
users also haven't subscribed.
* users are not being informed their email is not being delivered. This
is cleary false. Users receive an bounce message explaining why the
email was bounced and giving the URL of the blocking list organization.
* Email is protected speech. It's a Fundamental free speech right to be
able to send and receive messages. Yes but it's also a fundamental
right that I be allowed to reject messages. With telephones you can use
a number of blocking technologies to attempt to keep out telemarketers.
Many of these technologies will ultimately block people who are not
telemarketers. You can choose not to answer your door when someone
knocks. Free speech is not a guarantee that any one has to listen to
you. Only that you may speak. Block email is the same situation. I as
a system admin have a right to block any traffic coming into my private
owned system.
* Blacklisting isn't a magic bullet. Nobody ever said it was. It takes
lots of different efforts to stop spam. No one effort will ever truely
be 100% effective.
* Filtering is good. Yes but you make it out to be a magic bullet.
It's not anymore than blacklisting. To be precise you're talking about
content filtering. Blacklisting is actually a filter. I use content
filtering myself. However, it misses many many many pieces of spam and
blocks some legitimate mail. It's no better than blacklisting in that
respect. Further quite a few content filtering systems are not setup to
notify the sender that they were filtered.
I believe that given further research into this issue and discussion
with many system admins will paint you an entirely different picture. I
strongly urge that you undertake said research.
Should the virus scanning-and-removal also be delayed until the end user receives the mail ?
What is the difference anyway, UCE or Viruses, both are unwanted (the 'U' in UCE) and eat up bot the users and the ISPs resources, time/disk space/cpu/bandwith.
I came to work once, and was greeted by 13000 bounces in my mailbox, somebody had discovered a client's open sendmail who forwarded everything to our backup MX server, who then sent it to the promary MX, who happily processed it ;-(
Those who deliberatly run open mail-relays deserve to be either blacklisted by MAPS or simply shot.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
This is all fine and nice. It is a bit of a US centric view though, since (virtually) the rest of the world pays for their internet connection by the second.
So if I filter on my end, I still pay for the downloaded crap, despite the fact that I never (want to) see it. A powerful -, end user configurable filter directly at my ISP would be a different story.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
You can put it in a separate folder and examine, of course, but then you have to look at the stuff, so you might as well put it in your regular inbox. And you still stand the chance of missing a legitimate e-mail that looks too much like a spam.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
First off, if you are the system admin, there is something called a logfile. What is nice about reading the longs and interperting the logs is that is your job. Had you read your logs, you would not need ORBS to tell you there was a problem.
The ORBS run by Alan Brown used the entry tables as a form of 'punishment'. If you spoke out about how his methods were flawed, on the list you'd go.
Two of the new ORBS are not much better, in the method department. (I don't know about the 3rd). Neither of the ORBS's can produce copies of 'spam' comming from my box when asked. (Given I look at the logs daily, I'd be interested in seeing how the relaying would be done) I have told the two off them NOT to come back with their probes until they have some proof. The jury is out if these new ORBS will honor the simple idea of "don't bother me until you have proof" or will put systems on thier lists simply because admins find thier methods rude.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
First off, they link off to a site that talks about using Procmail to filter spam.
But Procmail says you should use MAPS...
...second, I love this quote:
Anti-spam blacklisting groups, such as MAPS and ORBs, put heavy pressure on ISPs to conform to a set of restrictive anti-spam policies and to virally pressure other ISPs to adopt the same policies.
Yeah, those nasty folks at MAPS, they force you to conform a restrictive anti-spam policy, to whit: stop letting your users send spam.
Oooo, I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!
I don't see a problem using blacklists so long as:
- the ISP informs its customers it uses blacklists;
- the ISP provides the complete blacklist on demand (e.g., a downloadable flat file of blacklisted IPs and their associated domain names)
- the ISP includes a REASON next to each IP/domain name (e.g., short like 'SPAM').
As a user I'd love to have my ISP blacklisting every spamming asshole under the sun. But as a user I also want to know that they *only* block spammers and not folks that they happen to dislike for political or personal reasons (e.g., an IP associated with pro-choice users).
If the ISP uses a blacklist generated by a third party, then I want that third party to make it easy for me to retrieve the list and see why each address was blocked.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?