Are People Using TMDA to Kill Spam?

NewtonsLaw writes "With spam becoming an increasingly frustrating part of life in the Net, I have to ask why more ISPs aren't implementing systems such as the excellent Open Source Tagged Mail Delivery Agent (TMDA) strategy? Using this system would mean that only those spammers who used bonafide email addresses in their headers would get through -- and means virtually all the penis enlargement, weight-loss and other scams would be blocked. Even the those habbitual "brand name" spammers (like Real, PayPal, etc) could still be blocked by adding them to the blacklist. With TMDA, email to and from regular correspondents is passed transparently and there's no risk of genuine messages being accidentally discarded by over-active filters. If enough ISPs at least offered TMDA as an option to their users, the effectiveness of spamming could be shattered almost overnight -- oh, wouldn't that be lovely?"

Comments

No spam blocker is perfect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is a risk of a legitimate messages being blocked, if the sender does not understand the "confirmation request" mail sent by TDMA, is not willing to answer it (think mailing lists), or blocks it as spam.

A second reason is false positives. Users have really quite different view on them. Some people hate spam so much that to avoid it, they are willing to block a real message every once in a while, and spend lot of time configuring and tuning their filters. For others, hitting "Delete" 30 times a day is less trouble than the nuisance in losing real legitimate messages.

effectiveness?

[universalcurb]

spammers don't care too much about effectiveness, they already deal with less than half-a-percent response rates anyway, and they don't give a darn if they're blocked... the fact of the matter is that spam is so freaking cheap to send, it will never go away. the way to kill it altogether is to raise the cost so much that it no longer becomes an attractive option. i hate to say it (being somewhat libertarian), but the only way to do that is to have anti-spam laws with some teeth that include some time in a state "correctional" facility. that would send the message.