funsec mailing list archives

Re: Public Policy and Consumer ISP Hygiene (was Comcastpop-ups)


From: chris () blask org
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:07:16 -0700 (PDT)

--- On Mon, 10/19/09, Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> wrote:

You're not getting it.

As far as dealing with pre-infected machines, a strong-auth that required the user to do something (like swipe a 
finger) prior to using email could stamp a message as being highly likely as having come from a human and therefore of 
higher priority than something that could have been produced by a robot.  As it is, there is absolutely no reason to 
assume that a given email was produced by a human other than the fact that it survived whatever Bayesian/RBL/etc. 
filtering that stands in front of the intended inbox.

Of course, none of that is going to happen, anyway, so it doesn't much matter.

@Valdis, re. "tracting the intractable":

I guess I could save "there is solving and then there is solving", and that by my own idea of a reasonable definition 
the "solution/s" to spam to date are too ugly to be accused of "solving" the problem.  Maybe a tourniquet analogy might 
do - they've stopped the bleeding but we may just lose the limb if we don't come up with something better before long.

For both of you, though, I am still so burned out from arguing spam solutions in previous years that I don't think I'll 
keep arguing them here much/any more (unless I start to lose my mind, in which case you shouldn't believe anything I 
say).  I'd bet that little or nothing has changed in the world of spam five years from now regardless what any of us 
has to say.

-chris


      
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