Re: ENUM and unsolicited messages

[Jim Reid <]

I think your unsolicited message is not appropriate for this list.
Messages in that category meet my definition of spam.... :-)

The spam problem has almost nothing to do with ENUM or ENUM trials.
Though admittedly, ENUM might be a way for spammers and other scumbags
to harvest email addresses. This could be thwarted, but not prevented,
by user education: making informed decisions about publishing email
addresses, deploying stronger anti-spam defences, etc. There is
clearly a role here for application providers and registrars offering
ENUM-related services. Some might choose to include anti-spam
precautions as part of their service offerings, like some ISPs do
already.

All the anti-spam legislation in the world won't cure the spam problem.
Just as no law will prevent somebody from shouting "Fire!" in a crowded
theatre.

There are a number of effective anti-spam measures available. A visit
to google will point you at most of them. The better tools ignore the
trivial changes some spammers make to their outgoing garbage and still
identify it as spam. For instance the tools look for keywords that
tend to be found in spam. However this zero-sum game is an arms race:
as the spam defences improve, the smarter spammers -- if that's not a
contradiction in terms -- construct messages that get past these
defences. And so it goes.