The Spam Problem: Moving Beyond RBLs

whirlycott writes "I just published a paper called The Spam Problem: Moving Beyond RBLs on my site. I comprehensively describe RBLs and list eight specific problems with them. I also get into ideas that next generation antispam system creators should read. I hope that this will be useful to anybody who is attending the Spam Conference at MIT on Jan 17th."

Comments

EFF said it better

[Lumpish Scholar]

whirlycott's article points to the Electronic Freedom Foundation's Public Interest Position on Junk Email (Google cache), which begins:

Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.

For the past several years, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has watched with great interest the debate regarding what to do about unsolicited bulk email from strangers, or spam. We have been asked to lend our support to bills that have been introduced in Congress, and we have been approached in various other ways to help lead the fight against this annoying intrusion into people's email mailboxes.

While members of the EFF staff and board find this unsolicited email to be as annoying as everyone else, we believe that the two most popular strategies for combatting it so far--legislation and anti-spam blacklists--have failed in their fundamental design. Anti-spam bills have been badly written, are unconstitutionally overbroad, and frequently wander into areas where legislators have no expertise, such as the establishment of Internet standards. 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) surreptitiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people. 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.

The focus of efforts to stop spam should include protecting end users and should not only consider stopping spammers at all costs. Specifically, any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients. Proposed solutions that do not fulfill these minimal goals are themselves a form of Internet abuse and are a direct assault on the health, growth, openness and liberty of the Internet.

Email is protected speech. 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. It is unacceptable, then, for anti-spam policies to limit legitimate rights to send or receive email. To the extent that an anti-spam proposal, whether legal or technical, results in such casualties, that proposal is unacceptable.