Dave Aronson <spamtrap.ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Fri February 27 2004 09:29, Tom Petch wrote: > >> If sending 1M messages got back a 1% response saying 'you failed' >> with no clue as to which 1% failed, we might cut down on the spam. > > Maybe I just have too much blood in my caffeine stream, ;^) > but I don't see the connection. J. Random Spammer spews 1M spams, > and receives back (assuming he used a valid sending address) Yes, let us assume the actual sender gets the "spam-refused" error. > 10K "this looked like spam" DSNs, in addition to the usual load of > angry replies, removal requests, "no such user", "no such domain", > "over quota", etc., plus the occasional purchase. What incentive do > the 10K new DSNs give him, to mend his evil ways, or even just to > scale back? No incentive to "mend his evil ways"; but a cost which may reduce the total amount of spam. (Recall that many believe a one-cent-per- spam cost would essentially eliminate the problem.) > Indeed, it seems to me that if anything, it helps him see what does or > does not work against spam filters, so he can tune his filter-evasion > strategies. I claim that benefit is minimal -- spammers have other ways of gathering the data to tune their filter-evasion. The benefit to the false-positive-sender, OTOH, is major. S/he knows that the email never got through, and can use one of the many available out-of-band methods to communicate the message. Iljitsch's point was that the false-positive problem is much less serious if senders of non-spam learn their email was discarded as spam. (I'd rather not speculate on whether the minimal benefit to the spammer is greater or less than the admittedly-minimal cost.) -- John Leslie <john@xxxxxxx>