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Spam Catchers Block Latest Crypto-Gram
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier sent out a note about SpamAssassin and possibly other spam filters blocking his excellent Crypto-Gram newsletter. Fortunately you can get it here (early no less!)." Schneier's email reads, in part "Tomorrow I will be sending out the February CRYPTO-GRAM, as I do on the 15th of every month. In the process of creating this month's Crypto-Gram, I discovered that SpamAssassin thinks that this issue is spam, probably because of certain links and descriptions of scams in the text. I have anecdotal evidence that other spam filters block Crypto-Gram as well. ... I'd apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm not sure what I could do to make it less so -- I don't intend to alter my content to accommodate spam filters."
Who thinks this is an utter waste of a FPP? I mean, why the hell would anybody even submit this to /.? And if they did, why the hell would it be posted fer crissake?
Wow. Some spam filters may have a false positive. How groundbreaking. News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
ehintz
Come on - is it really your fault if you accidently find yourself "a customer of an ISP harboring a spammer?" Do you deserve to be punished too? Do you really think that blocking the entire netblock of people who may be using the service because they have no other choice is really a good method to stop spammers?
I doubt many people blocked due to a single spammer are going to think "oh, well, I may not be able to send e-mail to my most important client - but at least while I'm losing thousands of dollars, I know I'm helping to fight spam!" Most, I'd bet, would just call up the offending receiver and complain that they're getting bounce messages when they try and send e-mail and that the receivers should fix their mail servers as soon as possible.
So, I guess if costing a few hundred people a hundred bucks to move to another service is "helping to reduce spam," it's a cost that they should be glad to pay...
If you want to use SPEWS for your own personal webserver, then go ahead. If you expect anyone doing any buisness with e-mail to use it regardless of the risks of blocking important e-mail, then you're out of your mind. If you think that blocking entire netblocks is going to encourage companies to use SPEWS, then you're insane. If you think harming many to bring justice to a few in the group is morally just, then I must question your morals.
(I suppose a better analogy would be "Yeah, the gas may have put hundreds of innocent civilians into the hospital for a month, but it also put the three-man scam out of operation!" in that people that are blocked by SPEWS can become unblocked, and hence are only "wounded." It's still harming many to eliminate a few.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
What is needed is a foolproof way of saying "I want this, please send it to me" and then being able to reject it safly without needing the other party to do it for you. For example:
It's called Usenet. You post something to a newsgroup, and anybody who is interested may read it without their mailbox getting stuffed with crap. Electronic mailing lists are for people who are too dumb to figure out how to configure a newsgroup reader.
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