Clever anti-spam hooks

[Serge Knystautas <se...@lokitech.com>]

http://www.spews.org/   I'm not sure how James can make use of this, but I
just came across this new way to stop spamming and really like the approach.

What they do is if spam is reported, the *webserver* (well, technically the
DNS entry) that the spam is promoting gets blacklisted (instead of the mail
server sending it).  Then for people using ISPs that check this blacklist,
they will not be able to get to that site.

The older approach of blacklisting the mailserver is making the mistake of
"killing the messenger".  If you can block and penalize what that spam is
promoting, then you've efficiently disincentivized spamming.  (If I were to
send a spam mail out, I may only get 0.01% response rates, but if I can send
10,000,000 emails for almost no cost, that's 1,000 response!  But, if by
sending this spam an existing 2,000 existing users can no longer get to my
site, then it's not worth it.  Apparently TimeWarner and some other major
ISPs are starting to use this system's DNS deny feature.)   The DNS deny
approach may not be the best way to accomplish this, and perhaps that why
there is a "HTTP Reject" section coming soon.

So maybe we can go back soon to the days of unrestricted mail servers, more
user-friendly settings and not having to lock-down mail servers or develop
new SMTP protocols.

Serge Knystautas
Loki Technologies - Unstoppable Websites
http://www.lokitech.com/


--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:   <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: <ma...@jakarta.apache.org>