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Name and Shame Spam Senders With OpenBSD
Peter N. M. Hansteen writes "Once you've identified spam senders, OpenBSD provides all the tools you need to take one step further: exporting their addresses and publishing the evidence. You can even trap them yourself using known bad addresses. It's easy, fun and good netizenship."
They can call it easy, fun, and good netizenship... But I say they're just putting a friendly face on vigilanteism.
From a technical perspective this isn't that different from other collaborative filtering systems (though since the listing criteria is based on secondary sources, it's going to be susceptible to confirmation bias and other sampling errors, so this isn't likely to be a good one). I take big issue with the naming, though: Other collaborative filters say that "This machine is listed because it met these criteria", which you then make your own decisions on.
It crosses a line when you're saying they should be "shamed", especially when you're not taking extensive precautions to make sure you're not listing innocents.
Whoosh.
That form is older than I am, and it still works perfectly.
What's the point of trying to *shame* a spammer? You can't shame someone who has no shame.
Naming them is pointless, too. "Oh, hey, I found out it's a guy named Viktor in the Ukraine sending me all this spam!" Now what?
mark poster as redundant [..] you must work in some kind of public service office pushing paper to think a form is a good way to express an opinion.
On the contrary. The fact that someone's argument can be criticised and/or refuted via such standardised means (*) shows that it fails in one or more now well-defined areas that previous "solutions" have exhibited and should have been considered this time round. And/or that this is merely an inadvertant repackaging of an older idea.
The slightly tongue-in-cheek form makes the point well, and far from being longwinded is shorthand compared to having a tedious and pointless rehash of previous discussions.
(*) As another poster mentioned, this "form" has been around for ages.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Shaw received a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a $345 fine in restitution and a year-long restraining order barring her from the Comcast office.
I assure you that if I could get away with that kind of punishment I'd do the same thing! Only I'd use a bat instead.
Most of the article is about grey listing. That's nearly suicidal for most mail server administrators. When I tried it, it did make a difference.
Of course, while it is working..........
Executive A, "This guy just sent me a contract 60 seconds ago. I keep clicking the damn send/receive button but it's not coming in. Are you a fucking moron or something? What the HELL is going on?!!"
Either paranoia, or people trying to send email with attachments to each other while *on the phone*, makes grey listing a huge hassle for the administrator. You just can't force a delay in email of 10 or 20 minutes for most users. The pitch forks and torches come out.
Once you do use it, you cannot control the duration of the delay either. The other mail server has its own settings on how often it retries mail as well. So yours is set to 3, theirs is set to 20. The delay is 20.
I also find it hard to believe that the spammers have not figured this out. It's not like they are stupid. They try very hard to deliver their payloads. It would be trivial to update their software to retry messages that receive those codes.
Oh, and if you have high volume get ready to drain some resources. Keeping track of thousands and thousands of IP addresses in a grey list to determine which one can communicate at what point is resource intensive.
Currently, nothing. If somebody ever does come up with something that will, it will spell the end of spam. I'm not holding my breath.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
As Bill Gates and others have noticed previously, a very obvious solution to the whole spam and e-mail viruses problem would involve removing just one single line from this form:
( ) Sending email should be free
Though it is next to atrocious to admit for anyone who's using e-mail now, setting a $$$ cost to each message sent is probably the only way both first-level spammers and owners of infected machines would be forced to go off-line. This doesn't necessarily mean establishing a central authority - ISPs could simply analyze sent traffic.
But a "solution" like that will dramatically change the nature of Internet. It's really tough come up with a working solution that's not worse than the problem.
-- Sig down
... is it good Nietzscheanship?
> Really is spam that big of a problem anymore?
For people who actually run email servers the fact that 99% of their traffic is spam is a problem, yes.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As Bill Gates and others have noticed previously, a very obvious solution to the whole spam and e-mail viruses problem would involve removing just one single line from this form:
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
Really is pollution that big of a problem anymore? Ever since I've switched to BigAssFilter air conditioning system, all of the pollution has been filtered out of my home.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!