Re: How do you stop outgoing spam?

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002 09:12:15 PDT, Joe St Sauver said:
> Actually, our experience *does* follow the backoff paradigm: if you block a 
> particular source of spam, that rejection *does* seem to trigger "message
> volume" backoff at the source, with only periodic check probes apparently 
> designed to see if the spam source is really still blocked (and of course 
> it really still is). 

Yes - but since they need to have N replies to their spam to make it worth
the effort, they will just pound on somebody ELSE.  I saw one quote from
a very unapologetic spammer who was complaining that with all these blocks
he had to send a lot more spam and his costs were up 1000% as a result.

Let's say a spammer needs 100 replies to turn a profit, and 1% of the things
that make it into a mailbox get a reply.  If nobody blocks spam, then the
spammer only needs to send 10K messages before he profits.  If 99% of spam
is blocked, he has to send a million.  That's why we're seeing statistics
like "receives 2 billion pieces of mail a day and 80% is spam".

Think of it like a host with multiple A records - if one A goes down, they
*do* stop trying that one, but they then fail to use backoff on the OTHER
addresses.... ;)
-- 
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Senior Engineer
                                Virginia Tech

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