Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 04:09:59 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: how to deal with spam for good? Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNIELDFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.61.0503102139012.12898@dave.horsfall.org>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Dave Horsfall > Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 2:42 AM > To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: RE: how to deal with spam for good? > > > On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > The only long term solution that is going to work is modding the > > DNS records to designate an official SMTP server for each > domain, such > > a plan has been in the works for a while among the standard bodies > > that know what they are doing. > > Which, of course, will do nothing to stop spam, but only > forgeries. This > issue has been dealt with many times upon the anti-spam lists. > Correct, however when I go to the police to report criminal spamming activity, it gets a lot better response when I can tell them who is doing it. :-) Don't be impatient. There are a lot of pieces that still have to be placed before the spam is going to start dropping. We aren't going to see much change until at least 2010 because by then most of the Windows XP desktop systems will be flushed out of the network, and replaced with the next version of Windows which will be much harder to find holes in. I don't have a lot of respect for Microsoft but I will say that once they get moving in a general direction, they are like the Borg they don't stop until everything has been assimilated. Microsoft only gave lip service to computer security until just a couple years ago, but they are finally moving in that direction, and they are not going to stop for a long time yet. Once you see most of the desktops on the Internet behind firewalls and translators, and being forceably updated with security patches, without the consent or even knowledge of their owners, a lot of this hit and run spamming is going to die down. That will flush out the amateur spammers that operate out of their garages and make a few extra bucks at it, and push a lot of the spam to the professionals, who will get a lot richer and thus make far more attractive targets to the collection of state DA's who's job it is to go after them. And the more agressive those people get the more the large networks are going to be encouraged to be nasty also. Red China is pretty successful at filtering stuff that goes into that country, they are proof that the technology exists to clamp down on offshore spammers. It is merely a political problem of generating the necessary will among the ISP's and their customers to deploy that technology in the US, but that will is slowly being developed. It would have happened sooner but for the "pioneer wild west" mythos attached to the Internet in the US, just because it started here, and it's taken a long time to stamp that out. Also don't forget too that the war on drugs would be pointless if they didn't arrest the people buying the stuff as well as the people selling the stuff. So far the lawmakers have focused on the spammers selling the spam, but what isn't discussed is that spam wouldn't happen if people wern't buying the stuff spammers are pushing. It's not out of the realm of possibility to make it illegal to buy products from a spammer, and a few high profile prosecutions of purchasers would do wonders to reduce the revenue stream that feeds spammers, don't you think? I better stop now before you think I'm a total devil. :-) But seriously the problems with spam are growing to be more of a political/economic/criminal nature than a technical nature. Solutions are going to have to come from the governments, not from the techs. And they will unfortunately be solutions that are not as clean as ones the technical community will want to use, but they will be more effective, in the same way a club is more effective at opening a door than a lockpick is. Ted
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