A radical idea on spam control 1

[paleogryph]

A radical idea on spam control:
Why do we treat email differently than ip packets?
Why not treat emails as if they were any other kind of traffic that needed to be filtered in the most robust way possible.

Yes, I use SpamAssassin and have a blacklist a mile long...

But why not block everything and then unblock only known legit addresses.
Users complain? So what!
The days of email innocence are long gone...
Domains are hijacked by spammers, headers manipulated and filtering rules bent.

You want an example:

http://www.egy.com

Spammers will always be ahead of the curve.

Filter mail based on whether the address is in your address book.
If someone wants to send you a mail and they are not in your book there are other methods to confirm legitimacy.



>Think for yourself<
...or someone else will do it for you.

 

[manarth]

recent news is that in a month or two, the volume of spam will exceed the volume of legitimate messages online. (sorry - I can'd find the reference... so take this info with a pinch of salt!)

trouble is, spam can (in theory) overwhelm the internet. the cost of snail mail is bourne by the person sending it (cost of a stamp) so junk mail becomes expensive.

the cost of spam to the spammer is minimal; the cost is bourne by the recipients (in their fees to the ISP - to pay for bandwidth, etc).

see also: thread717-514043 - How can we combat spam?


<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[paleogryph]

Some comments:

1. Spam isn't a big deal. Spam is a huge deal. Not only does it waste bandwidth, storage space and processing time (however minimal by todays fast computers), it also wastes time of the employees who have to deal with it. Lots of time, which = $.

2. No, there is no single solution. A combination of SA, blacklists and also tweaking of your mail client to filter by address book (my opinion).

3. it appears to me that most of spam is from spoofed addresses via open-relay mail servers.

4. Spam is only going to increase, just like viruses. This problem isn't going away.



>Think for yourself<
...or someone else will do it for you.

 

[GreenTeeth]

I think there is a thing that is being overlooked here you know.

Firstly, spammers are logically one of two people

1. People trying to advertise

2. W*****s with nothing better to do than annoy people.

Now in my mind, the second type of person probably has more fun writing viruses, but is likely to be in the minority.

However, the first case I would have thought would be logical. Now purely looking at tek tips in general, you would have guessed that spam is not really wanted, and in business that is certainly the case. But spam must work for some people. There must be people out there that do fill in the little forms (God bless their souls) so you are never going to get rid of spam.

There is a system with phones and faxes where you register and they put you on an exclusion list, it then becomes illegal for someone to cold call you or junk fax you.
Now I'm not suggesting this as law, but something could work. Do spammers really want to target trash cans and recycle bins.

 

[manarth]

take a look at the number of spammers who spoof their email addresses so you're unable to block it.

they change the email by a few random figures each time, so you get bombarded by the same crap time and time again - even though you've tried to block it (which in my mind at least is a pretty clear &quot;NO&quot.

nice idea GreenTeeth - if only spammers behaved ethically (or at least just behaved legally!)

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[GreenTeeth]

Manarth, do you think they would behave ethically if we handed out boiled sweets?

 

[devilman0]

Why not compare the senders domain to his ip? if it doesn't match then bounce it.

Thanks,
James

&quot;Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.&quot; ~bumper sticker

 

[Albion]

&quot;But is spam really such a big deal?

We all get the same junk through the door every day, and we throw it away like we always have. What’s the big deal with doing it with spam ?&quot;

You really think Spam isn't that big of a deal? I get approximately 50 to 100 e-mails a day. Of which maybe 2 or 3 are legitimate e-mails. People like you say ignore the spam and delete it; do you know how long it takes me to &quot;ignore and delete&quot; that many spam messages per day while making sure I don't delete my real e-mail. I'll tell you, it's about 30 minutes a day. I make $40/hr, which equates to $20 wasted per day just sifting through spam. Multiply that by 250 (approximately the number of work days in the year) and you have $5000/year just so I can read my legitimate e-mail. Now let's say I have 1000 users at half my pay rate who get e-mail, that's $2,500,000 a year wasted just for spam. I'm sorry but that’s $2.5 million would be better spent on workstations, pay raises, servers, and software.

So, do you still think spam is no big deal?

-al

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

Albion - I agree. Its a huge deal.

Currently we have to soak it up to some degree but we need a massive overhaul of how email works. Postage would be one way. You could overcome problems of business paying postage via some type of VPN between company A and company B when exchanging emails. Then you are only left with businesses paying for the odd emails that they have not set up an agreement with yet. Would you be upset paying 1 cent per email to stop the flood of spam email? I'm open to other ideas but the problem of spam is half that you have to make it finacially unviable for it to be used. Other methods I've read/heard about have a good chance of being circumvented.

 

[devilman0]

Very true. That 2.5 million goes to the spamers, they are the ones who make the money. You also have to rember those xxx ads that show up in your work mailbox, haven't had it happen to me, but i can imagine what could happen if a spamer figured out a whole companies addresses and started spaming them with those xxx ads. Could be devestating if your customers were near when one poped up.

Thanks,
James

&quot;Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.&quot; ~bumper sticker

 

[ApplePirate]

sorry if i missed the point here...
Spam is a real pain in backside, but why not just set up a few outlook mail rules so that mail is recieved and it doesnt pass the rule it is sent straight to the trash...
is this too easy, or will you all start shouting at me now

Never ever, bloody anything, ever

 

[Grenage]

Because your average spam has subtle subjects and the like.

 

[devilman0]

It is as easy as that, however, outlook is very limited in what you can do filtering wise, you can block all key words and such but if some one spell sex like this s e x then your filters dont' work (very common). So you end up back to square 1. blocking sender also works sometimes, but they will also do this 6543218131dsasdfsf_bounce654@5231832sdfadfadf.spamer.com <-- that is clearly a randomly generated message (common), again back to square 1. Mail filters, and checkers only filter probably 75% of mail, if you get 1 piece of junk a day, that is good, if you get 100 pieces of junk, you still have to go through 25 pieces of junk to get to the one or two important messages. Also, you computer downloads the messages (most of the time) before the outlook filter does anything, so this costs you connect time, and like Albion said, this can cost 2.5million a year. You do have a good point, spam filtering isn't a one step process, you need to attack it from many different angles.

my 2 cents.

Thanks,
James

&quot;Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.&quot; ~bumper sticker

 

[Albion]

&quot;why not just set up a few outlook mail rules so that mail is recieved and it doesnt pass the rule it is sent straight to the trash...&quot;

It's not quite that easy. First of all you have to keep up with the ever-changing methods of spamming. A rule you make today is worthless tomorrow. For instance it used to be that we could just filter out e-mail that didn't have our e-mail address in the To: line of an e-mail. That doesn't work anymore. I run rules in outlook, A spam filter on my workstation, a blacklist on my SMTP server, and I block the entire Korean IP block. Sure it filters out a lot but I can't just send them off to the trash. And that bring me to the second problem.

What if an important e-mail is a false positive? Now not only am I wasting time keeping up with the rules, and reading spam web pages to keep up with the latest spammer work arounds but I have to go through all the mail in my spam folder looking to see if there are any false positives in there.

Let me give you an example. This link shows four days of spam in my spam folder (already filtered). This doesn't include the 20 or so messages a day that don't get filtered.

http://24.106.41.38/Spam/index.html

How would you like to see that after coming back from a 3-day weekend? Especially if you are expecting 3 important e-mails from an unknown address as many tech support replies are.

-al

 

[paleogryph]

We use an email client called Poco. Here is a link with a simple rule you can add that filters by what addresses are in your address books.

http://www.jdfsoftware.com/pocofaq/filterknownaddress.html

>Think for yourself<
...or someone else will do it for you.