I'm sure many will think this a stupid comment, but in the hopes that some don't I'll point out that the largest and arguably most efficient messaging system in the world is built upon open relay. Anyone can anonymously drop a letter in any mailbox in the US and while there's junk mail it's proportions are certainly nothing like spam. Why the difference? Well first I split spam into 2 categories:
1. legitimate advertisements for legitimate products (whether solicited or unsolicited).
2. Fraudulent mail, scams, cons, etc.
I think the email abusers almost entirely fall into the second category and that nobody would be complaining if spam primarily consisted of Bloomingdale's catalogues and coupon val-paks.
So I think we are attacking things the wrong way. The methods we are using - whether blacklists or 'authorized email' is going to either prove fruitless or end up ruining the big picture, which for me is electronic communication for everyone, to everyone. Using electronic means, I don't see how we can ever prevent spam and still have open global communication among disparate systems. It would be a different story if one organization ran all email servers worldwide but that horrible thought aside there will always be holes and breaks in an authentication/authorization scheme unless people limit who they can communicate with, and even then there will be spam.
There's also the returns we see on our efforts to consider. Think of the millions of man/woman hours spent trying to stop spam - so many hours it probably would have taken less to inspect every email by hand. And then when you think (if you believe as I do) that everything can be gotten around and that security holes are as infinite as the imagination, well then you know there will always be some kid with a script (which also includes any real spammer) who will be able to get around your defenses within a week of them being implemented.
My last unconstructive comment is that simple systems scale lossless and complex systems grow in a complexity proportionate to their size.
Funny enough, I think the postal inspector's department came about because of the amount of scams being sent via mail shortly after the civil war (such a glut that it was bringing the postal service to their knees). Yet the postal service remained open-relay - why? Maybe because they realized that they didn't need to 'trace' scam-mail because scams are trace-inclusive as the scammer must include a point of contact. Sure there's the occasional anonymous letter bomb but since their resources aren't spent blocking coupon mailers they are much more likely to catch the big stuff.
I know there are 8 trillion problems with this idea but I think in general, email fraud needs to become like mail fraud and there needs to be a team of inspectors who follow up on such reports and arrest violators (I know the Internet is bigger than the US, so of course it's up to each country how to handle it). I'm sorry for the non-technical post but I think blacklists are disgusting (I don't care if they help or not) and I just think so much brilliance could be directed elsewhere.
Thanks and best regards,
Nick Staff
nick.staff@xxxxxxxxxxx
-------------- Original message --------------
Best regards,
Nick Staff
-------------- Original message --------------
> > > it's possible to have open relays that don't contribute to spam. but
> > > those relays need to employ some other means, e.g. rate limiting, to
> >
> > Rate limiting is a relatively recent technique. Though very useful it has...
> > ummm, limited applicability.
>
> mostly because of blacklists. it was working fine for its intended purpose.
>
> > One needs to be careful not to dismiss established techniques in favor of the
> > latest fashionable one that is not as well fully understood.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "relatively recent", but I was doing it at least
> as early as April 1999 - that's the last mod date on my source files. RFC 2554
> only dates from March 1999.
>
> > For example! , rate limiting is used to control a single source. It's quite
> useful
> > when used at the destination. At a sufficiently well-run source network, it
> also
> > can be pretty useful.
>
> It's also pretty useful for preventing a relay from being exploited by spammers.
>
> > The problem is with zombies. They make mush of old-time models of spam, since
> > they demonstrate that a very small data stream from a single source can be
> > leveraged into a very, very large data stream, given enough sources.
>
> Rate limiting of this type (based on source IP address), if done properly,
> doesn't
> help or hurt zombies. The rates need to be set such that zombies can send
> directly
> to the recipients' MXes as easily, and more reliably, as they can send the same
> mail via the rate limiting SMTP servers.
>
> > One can start imagining ! more complex rate-limiting models, but then we would
> be
& gt; > talking about research efforts. A BCP is not supposed to rely on research,
> > especially when it hasn't been done.
>
> Maybe you should stick to talking about things that you know something about.
>
> > > block spam. the goal of such relays is to make it at least as easy for
> > > the spammer to simply contact the appropriate MXes for the destination
> > > addresses as to use the relays. of course it is necessary for such
> > > relays to record source IP addresses, etc., so that they are as
> > > traceable to their origin as messages sent directly to MXes.
> >
> > I don't know how much experience you have trying to do such tracing, but the
> > spamops folks have made quite clear that it is both vastly more effort and
> > considerably less productive, than one might expect.
>
> That's a problem with mail relaying in ge! neral, not just with open relays.
> Now if you want to discourage multi-hop mail relaying, that might actually be
> useful for lots of reasons besides just traceability.
>
> > > unfortunately, the vigilante character of various open-relay blacklists
> >
> > blacklists are not the subject of this BCP.
>
> This thread has pretty much diverged from the subject of your draft
> document anyway.
>
> > > killed any attempt at this kind of innovation. just as we're now in
> > > danger of various kinds of brain-dead "authentication" methods and
> > > meaningless requirements killing useful email functionality.
> >
> > new authentication methods are not the subject of this BCP.
>
> You mean "your draft document". It's certainly not a BCP as it's
> currently written.
>
> Keith
>
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