I know this is on the 'your idea will not work because' [x] list. But, I am going to put it out there, because it came up in X400 discussions. X400 people discussed if the security tokens across the MTA-to-MTA path were sufficient. And, they discussed cost recovery models because it was consciously designing for utility scale deployment in nation-states, in a time where sendmail was the norm, and mail was paid for by the state, for education and research. IF we had implemented sender-pays, the SPAM problem would be radically different. It would still be there, and the existence proof is SMS spam. But, I believe the intensity would be different, and the chain back to the cause would be different. Money talks. Money leaves trails. Money would have exposed promiscuous senders to exposure of cost. We didn't like to talk about money and so we painted money evil, but money was always there: we just invented a virtual world, where other people did money and we did things, as if money had no role to play. SPAM filter on receive, is about the worst possible way to limit the impact of spam. In other domains of problem in the internet we discuss things like BCP38 which are also doomed, and also stand as existence proof that it won't work, but the idea has significant merit in this regard: you are asked to look at your customers, and try to limit their bad behaviour facing outward. SPAM on ingress is dropping bad things, after the gun has fired. BCP38 and like, is trying to stop the gun being Fired. there. I did it. I crossed the beams into Second amendment rights. Let mayhem ensue... [x] your idea will not work because we are scared to revisit the past. On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 12:37 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 12/17/19 9:07 PM, John Levine wrote: > > > In article <de9253b3-d545-a477-168e-4c1b50ec0cba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> you write: > >> Spam filters are a good example. Poorly chosen spam filters are the > >> primary reason that email has become so unreliable. > > Actually, spam is the primary reason that email has become so > > unreliable. If you did't do spam filtering, however imperfectly, your > > mailbox would be so awash in junk you couldn't find the trickle of > > real mail. > > I did say "poorly chosen" spam filters. I don't claim that all spam > filters are poorly chosen, but I've seen many that are. > > As it turns out, I have several mailboxes with no spam filtering, and > they're not awash in junk. But mileage does vary - I have other > mailboxes that do have spam filtering and are still awash in junk. > > Keith > >
