Fighting Spam with Python

[David MacQuigg]

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 10:36:28 -0400, François Pinard
<pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

>[David MacQuigg]
>
>> Getting these methods widely and effectively used is our big
>> challenge, and one that I hope to accomplish with my efforts.
>
>I wish one of these methods, either yours or one of these few others
>which were developed and proposed in the recent years, will succeed.

I don't have a method, and that is a key part of the strategy.  The
Registry is intended to support all methods.  My main technical
contribution, if you can call it that, is to figure out how we can tie
these methods into a system where not all participants are using the
same method.  ( An inter-operability protocol, if you need a fancy
name.)

>It might be useful, for someone involved like you are (thanks for all of
>us!), that you make a survey of those others, trying to understand why
>they failed to acquire popularity, not repeating the same errors if any.

The main reason for the current failure is that the effort to achieve
a common authentication standard has degenerated into a war.

I did try to find information on other attempts at setting up a
Registry/Clearinghouse of reputation information.  There has been an
effort by Spamhaus to establish such a registry, but they were
counting on senders to support it.  That seems to me a fatal flaw.

Our plans are to have *receivers* support the registry via
subscription fees.  Senders will need an incentive, and that will be
provided by receivers who use the Registry to clear reputable mail,
and send the rest to a spam filter.

There are also some successful proprietary systems, like IronPort
Senderbase, that I think are similar, but I don't know the details.
You have to pay them big bucks for a "spam appliance".

--
Dave