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

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "JWB" == John W Baxter <jwblist@olympus.net> writes:

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

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

Some of the work the python.org postmaster (Greg Ward) is doing
involves examining and rejecting messages during the SMTP dialog.  The
trick is to force them to do more work to deliver their spam, upping
the costs of the sending host just enough for it to be not worth it.
Unfortunately, I suspect our own costs will go up faster than theirs
so we'll likely lose this battle too.  But IMO, anything that isn't
economics based will fail.

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

Yup, but on the other side of the coin, they're getting sued and
losing for not verifying their opt-in lists.  But none of that matters
either given the global nature of things.

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

can-i-be-a-rock-star-now?-ly y'rs,
-Barry