MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Marc Perkel <ma...@perkel.com>]

I'm looking over your MTX site and like SPF I don't understand how it 
stops spam. Thanks for at least addressing in part the email forwarding 
issue.

In order to be a white list you have to do something spammers can't do. 
I don't see what prevents spammers from creating good MTX records like 
they do with SPF and whitelisting themselves. Since your idea also 
requires blacklists to counter this effect then I'm still not sure what 
this adds. As you know people register new domain names just to avoid 
being on any list so your idea would seem to be a white list for those 
who exploit that.

As to penalizing those who don't participate, I already have enough 
headaches with SPF and others who want to inflict their personal 
standards on the whole of the email community. SPF. which has left me 
with a bad attitude, does nothing for me to catch spam or pass ham. But 
it does result in good email that I forward being blocked.

I'm always looking for innovative ideas that actually work. I don't want 
to discourage you. But the "actually works" part is very important. I 
have had a lot of ideas that I got really excited about and after I 
implemented them I found out that the idea wasn't quite as good as I 
thought it would be.

As to whitelisting - there's actually a far easier solution that I use. 
I do RDNS to get the host name. Then I forward confirm it to verify that 
it is valid. Spammers can't spoof that. Then I look it up in my host 
name white list of hosts who send nothing but good email. This actually 
works extremely well. But like everyone I'm always looking for more 
ideas especially for white rules because in y bustness one good email 
bounced is words that 100 spams not bounced.

Re: MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Henrik K <he...@hege.li>]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 03:36:53PM -0500, Darxus@ChaosReigns.com wrote:
> On 02/16, Kris Deugau wrote:
> > Marc Perkel wrote:
> >> ...  Since your idea also
> >> requires blacklists to counter this effect then I'm still not sure what 
> >> this adds.
> >
> > *nod*  This is the biggest question I still see remaining;  who  
> > maintains the blacklist?  How many spams can come from an "MTX-approved"  
> > IP before it can/should be blacklisted?
> 
> Because I believe it will be far easier to maintain a list of IPs and / or
> domains which spam *and* use MTX, due to significant reduction in IPs they
> can spam from.  My last post went into more detail.

You keep "believing" without actually ever explaining anything in detail.
How is it easier? You STILL need global traps/feeds to have reasonable data
and reputation. Are you going to be the maintainer? I don't see how MTX
would help for example Spamhaus. They list everything anyway and it works
fine.

Some people do maintain own lists, but I don't understand how MTX helps them
blacklist either.

> The problem of deciding at which point you blacklist somebody is the reason
> why my blacklist implementation allows you to set an SA score for each
> domain.  So hosts which send legitimate email *and* spam you can give a
> score which only negates the effect of the MTX Pass.
> 
> The public blacklist implementation also allows for this distinction.

I'm sure you know that SA is not the only software/appliance out there.
Probably even the minority. Ijf you want to keep a list, it needs to be DNS
based anyway. Do you really think once a day update is enough for data which
can be old in matter of minutes?

Re: MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Da...@ChaosReigns.com]

On 02/16, Kris Deugau wrote:
> Marc Perkel wrote:
>> ...  Since your idea also
>> requires blacklists to counter this effect then I'm still not sure what 
>> this adds.
>
> *nod*  This is the biggest question I still see remaining;  who  
> maintains the blacklist?  How many spams can come from an "MTX-approved"  
> IP before it can/should be blacklisted?

Because I believe it will be far easier to maintain a list of IPs and / or
domains which spam *and* use MTX, due to significant reduction in IPs they
can spam from.  My last post went into more detail.

The problem of deciding at which point you blacklist somebody is the reason
why my blacklist implementation allows you to set an SA score for each
domain.  So hosts which send legitimate email *and* spam you can give a
score which only negates the effect of the MTX Pass.

The public blacklist implementation also allows for this distinction.

-- 
"Will I ever learn? I hope not, I'm having too much fun."
- Brent "Minime" Avis, motorcycle.com
http://www.ChaosReigns.com

Re: [sa] Re: MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Charles Gregory <cg...@hwcn.org>]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2010, Kris Deugau wrote:
> *nod*  This is the biggest question I still see remaining;  who maintains the 
> blacklist?  How many spams can come from an "MTX-approved" IP before it 
> can/should be blacklisted?

Why do we need any new/special blacklist at all? If the spamming from a 
given IP is sufficiently large, the regular internet blacklists will 
capture this IP and do a far better job of blacklisting, managing removes, 
etc, etc. Why reinvent the wheel?

- C

Re: MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Matthias Leisi <ma...@leisi.net>]

Am 16.02.10 21:23, schrieb Kris Deugau:

> *nod*  This is the biggest question I still see remaining;  who
> maintains the blacklist?  How many spams can come from an "MTX-approved"
> IP before it can/should be blacklisted?

It does not necessarily or exclusively need to be a manually maintained
blacklist. Domain-age- and usage-based blacklists would be useful in
that context.

-- Matthias

Re: MTX - How does it stop spam?

[Kris Deugau <kd...@vianet.ca>]

Marc Perkel wrote:
> ...  Since your idea also
> requires blacklists to counter this effect then I'm still not sure what 
> this adds.

*nod*  This is the biggest question I still see remaining;  who 
maintains the blacklist?  How many spams can come from an "MTX-approved" 
IP before it can/should be blacklisted?

-kgd