Re: [anti-spam-wg@localhost] Solution to Spam

[der Mouse <]

Omnibus reply here....

[Mark McCarron]

> You have most of this all wrong.  [...]  The details I sent, I admit,
> are sketchy,

They're clear enough: you're building an ISP-level whitelist, with ISPs
expected to (a) do some song and dance with users to make it harder to
script outgoing mail and limit the damage done when they succeed (this
is where the human OCR and the delays come in) and (b) sign mail on the
way out so that receivers can verify that (a) was done - or at least
that the sending ISP certifies that it was done.  (The whitelist is
needed so as to stop arbitrary people from signing mail when nothing
was actually done to stop it from being spam.)

> All email clients will have patches issued for them to handle the new
> system.

Indeed.  When can I expect the patches for mine?

> Our goal is this.  End Spam, not legitimate use.

I'll add my voice to those saying "you certainly want to end _my_
currently-legitimate use".  Mailing lists are _not_ unimportant to me.

[Mark McCarron again]

> Der Mouse has been posting on what he believes the system to be, even
> when corrected he still reverts to his own belief.

I think I have it straight now.  In what way is my description above
incorrect?

> Also, how hard is it to download a file and click install,

The problem is not doing it.  The problem is getting people to do it.
Have you ever been involved in deployment of even one mass-market
software update?  Heck, I know someone running Windows 3.1!

>>> 'Mailing lists' as I said are unimportant however
> I was half asleep when I wrote that.  What I meant to type was the
> majority of Internet users are NOT members of any mailing lists.

On what do you base that statement?  What grounds do you have for
saying anything about what "the majority of Internet users" do?  (This
is a serious question.  I'm not aware of any research that's been done
in the area and I'd like to hear about it.)

> Therefore, to the majority of Internet users, mailing lists are
> unimportant.  I see you deliberatly ignored the part about them NOT
> being blocked.

The whole delay thing will block them, as someone already poinetd out.

[more Mark McCarron]

> I started out as a network engineer.  Stop trying to make it sound
> complicated, its not, if it is, then your a really bad administrator
> and shouldn't be in your job.  That simple.  I've done 2000 machines
> in under 2 days on my own.  When you know a little about scripting
> and remote installations the rest is a breeze.

Perhaps, when they're under central administration.  Where is the
central administration for all email users?

["Angel of Death", Mark McCarron again from another address - another
webmail address, I note]

> [der Mouse] hasn't had a chance to play with yet and he has the
> entire setup confused.

What do I have confused?  You're expecting to update a significant
fraction of the email software (both MUAs and MTAs) on the net in a
matter of no more than a few years.  You're killing mailing lists.
You're killing email for the blind and the text-only.

Do you disagree with any of those?  (Note the point about the delays
killing mailing lists.)  They alone are enough to indicate to me that
your touch with email reality is...poor at best.

[Walter Ian Kaye]

> Downloading graphics is UNACCEPTABLE

>> Our goal is this.  End Spam, not legitimate use.
> My goal is to annihilate HTML mail.  Or did you mean simply an
> "attached" file?

No, I don't think so.  The graphic thing is not part of the email; it's
part of the MUA<->MTA interaction, something the MTA insists on before
accepting the mail, presumably in an attempt to make message submission
unscriptable (though of course it wouldn't actually have that effect).

Of course, this ignores cases where the MUA<->MTA interaction doesn't
fit Mark's model of a low-volume end-user talking to a big ISP, such as
my own case - or most companies'.  This doesn't seem to bother Mark,
which is hardly surprising - when you're willing to kill the patient to
cure the disease, small things like that don't bother you.

In a way it's a pity, because (as I mentioned upthread) Mark's system
being adopted is one of the few things that actually could kill spam.
The gorillas could let their customers talk among themselves and the
rest of us could go back to speaking SMTP.

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