[Mailman-Developers] Opening up a few can o' worms here...

[John W Baxter]

At 17:46 -0400 7/16/2002, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
>>>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui@plaidworks.com> writes:
>
>    CVR> Problem is, many users don't know how. And one could argue
>    CVR> who ought to solve this problem. Should users be forced to
>    CVR> jump through hoops to use a mail list safely? Or is it the
>    CVR> user's decision how safe to be?
>
>Nope, I think it's the ISPs that will solve the problem, although it
>might be in ways mom-and-pops don't like.

I don't think the ISPs *can* solve the problem in the near-to-medium-term
future.  [Longer term, with the demise of SMTP and its "everything open to
all except for a few bandaids" approach, maybe.]

At some point, the SpamAssassin/quarantine model breaks down...when you
quarantine 10 large messages to let one smaller message go through, you're
somewhere close to that point.  As it is, we're busily installing four
machines to do the work that one would do quite well in the absence of
spammers (and they'll have help from another machine or two so that users
can see their quarantined mail and rescue their false positives).  And yes,
SpamAssassin is part of that picture.

Plus, I fear the "new breed" spammers (the ones who actually think their
advertising is useful and welcome and only sent to opt-in lists, although
they buy the lists from guys who [figuratively] sell them from under a
trenchcoat at the entrance to a dark alley) will cause legislation to be
passed forbidding filtering at the mail server level.  It nearly happened
last time around.

Ah, well...we'll see how it goes.

  --John

-- 
John Baxter   jwblist@olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA