[Hidden-tech] An Idea about Email

[Matthew Crocker]

On Aug 25, 2008, at 4:45 PM, ussailis at shaysnet.com wrote:

>   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's  
> area.
>   ** If you did, we all thank you.
>
>
> Here's an idea.
>
> Since I have become the owner of Shaysnet, I have had a chance to  
> look at a
> lot of spam. What I have observed is many of my users get the same  
> stuff.
> So, couldn't there be a program that says "if X users (let X be some
> reasonable number like 4) get the same mail, it is spam, therefore  
> deal
> with it"

Thousands of my users are on the same mailing lists so they get the  
same messages.  If I deleted identical mail after the 4th message I  
would have a lot of angry customers.

> Of course my "deal with it" would be to collect all the spam for one  
> day
> and send it all back to the first spammer of that day. If enough  
> ISPs did
> this...

All spam comes from a bogus sender address and if you send the spam  
back to the address in the e-mail you become a spammer yourself.  This  
is called a 'Joe Job'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

I switched @crocker.com & @the-spa.com over to Postini about a year  
ago and haven't looked back. fighting spam was a full time job for me,  
eating up huge resources in bandwidth and CPU.   I used to have 10  
high end machines getting crushed by spam (greylisters, dedicated DNS,  
spamassassin, anti-virus ...)  now with Postini I have 4 (2 inbound  
SMTP & 2 POP/IMAP toasters).     I have 2 full GigE connections to the  
Internet in Springfield,  you would be amazed how much bandwidth  
spammers could eat up if you let them.  I regularly had several  
hundred mbps hitting my mail servers causing a huge log jam and  
backing up mail for hours.

I'm 1000% better off letting Postini handle my inbound spam.   They  
have more resources (owned by Google) to both deal with the spam and  
handle the legal aspects of tracking down the culprits.



>
> Jim Ussailis
>
>
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From:  htcontact at town-websites.com
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:48:58 -0600
> To: ssol at interactiveguild.com, hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
> Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] An Idea about Email
>
>
>   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's  
> area.
>   ** If you did, we all thank you.
>
>
> I think the spam problem can be best attacked on ths technical side.
>
> The protocols for email were established long before anyone imagined  
> SPAM
> would become such a problem.  There have been a patchwork of  
> afterthought
> spam interventions, by ISPs, by email services, and at the end  
> user's PC,
> but email by and large continues to use a patchwork on top of old  
> protocols
> not suited to the task.  I haven't ever really looked at the  
> protocols,
> certainly not recently, but I think a starting point should be  
> something
> like a real identity registration that can be verified, something  
> like DNS
> registration, so you could tell the true source of email without  
> having to
> use heuristics to guess at the identity or what the content is.
>
> Even venturing at an design gets complicated enough to require a  
> task force
> and years of discussions, never mind implementation.  But I think a  
> better
> technology could make it easier to weed out spammers - through legal  
> means
> or simpler, more accurate screening; while also having a lighter  
> impact on
> small organizations and business that need reliable ability to contact
> their clients than the current patchwork.
>
> Charlie Heath
> Town Websites
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net
> Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>
> You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion  
> list.
> If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members
> page on the Hidden Tech Web site.
> http://www.hidden-tech.net/members
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net
> Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>
> You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion  
> list.
> If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members
> page on the Hidden Tech Web site.
> http://www.hidden-tech.net/members

--
Matthew S. Crocker
President
Crocker Communications, Inc.
PO BOX 710
Greenfield, MA 01302-0710

E: matthew at crocker.com
P: (413) 746-2760
F: (413) 746-3704
W: http://www.crocker.com