Reviving the Finger Protocol to Fight Spam?

Posted by Cliff on Sunday May 25, 2003 @07:55AM from the return-of-an-old-friend dept.

Greg asks: "Some will remember the finger protocol which is barely used now. Although this tool was useful in some case, today this tool would be a nice tool for spammers. However, could such be used against spam? Most spammer use bogus email, and most spam-fighters talk about changing SMTP is to implement a certificate system to make sure the sender is valid. While this is great, it'll require a complete re-write of the SMTP protocol, adoption and re-write of all software using SMTP. Wouldn't it be easier to use a 'finger'-like protocol? When receiving a mail we could check if the sender is valid or not. What people think about this?"

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Re:Shoot them all by Bob+Zer+Fish · 2003-05-25 10:55 · Score: 0, Redundant

Actually something similar might be a very good idea. How about this: A single IP is limited to sending so many emails per day? It would be complex to implement but as far as I can see is the only really effective solution (because then spammers would have to spoof ips, and this would be classed as hacking --> more prosecutions). The main problems are the way you tackle how an isp would deal with sending mail. :/ Clearly, though, one email server wouldn't send more than 100000 emails every 12 hrs for home users? (this is deliberately vague).... fill in the gaps? What do u reckon?