a proposal --the idiots at comcast suddenly started

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Gordon Peterson [gep2 () terabites com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:48 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] the idiots at comcast suddenly started

Of course, their INTENTION is to try to force everybody sending mail to
go through THEIR mail servers, in an attempt to throttle/control spam
transmission (especially the zombie spambot problem).

I agree with you that this kind of garbage is exceedingly annoying.

It would be FAR better to make a better and more effective arrangement
for spam blocking, such that unsolicited/deceptive/unwanted/malicious
E-mail would have a vanishingly small likelihood of ever being read...
to the point where spamming would not be economically attractive to the
perpetrators.

I believe that a fairly simple policy would achieve that... based on a
fine-grained whitelist and default ruleset:

   BY DEFAULT, incoming E-mails would be accepted for further processing
if they:

     1.  Do not use HTML.
     2.  Do not contain attachments.
     3.  Are less than some specified size (25K, 50K, maybe 100K).

   Mail messages passing those criteria would be filtered through a good
antispam content filter (Spam Assassin or similar).  Once HTML and
attachments are removed from the mix, antispam filters can do a very
effective job....!

   Mail recipients could agree to accept more fully-featured E-mail on a
sender-by-sender basis, perhaps including additional sender-based tests
(newsletters that always have a predictable masthead at the top or sig
file at the bottom, for example).

   Eliminating HTML would eliminate active content (ActiveX, scripting),
misrepresented "phishing" links, and other ruses used to evade antispam
content filters.

   Eliminating attachments would eliminate executable attachments,
viruses/worms, text-as-image, and other mail content that is either
dangerous or (also) used to evade antispam content filtering.

   Limiting E-mail size just basically helps prevent having a
recipient's inbox perhaps filled up by someone they don't know.

   ONCE INITIAL E-MAIL CONTACT WITH A GIVEN SENDER HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED,
there would be a fine-grained whitelist at the RECIPIENT end allowing
that sender to send that recipient any kind of mail the recipient agrees
to accept from that sender... presuming that it "looks like" mail from
that sender is expected to look.

   The fact that most recipients would not authorize ANYBODY to send
them executables would virtually eliminate E-mail as a (direct, at
least) propagation vector for viruses, worms, and other malicious
content that typically results in zombie spambot recruitment.
Eliminating clickable links in E-mail from unknown parties would help
prevent "blind" links which look deceptively like a link from their
bank, www.paypal.com or whatever but which actually goes invisibly to
some rogue server in Romania, China, or elsewhere.

Putting a crimp in spambot zombie recruitment, of course, would be a
major step towards making it not look like such a good idea for ISPs to
try things like port 25 blocking.

But I think we need to put a MAJOR crimp in the inherently unwise
(though widespread) perception that anybody can send just anybody e-mail
messages containing (possibly misrepresented) links, active content,
arbitrary attachments, and so forth and expect it to be delivered and
opened.  We will NEVER solve the spam problem until we overcome that
root problem.

David Farber wrote:
> to block port 25 in Pittsburgh, No notice and  no reason
>
> Of course i worked around it but DAMN idiots NO NOTICE


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