[PLUG] Spam, Etc.

[Jason Van Cleve]

I see.  So it actually sounds a little more like the personal
certificate idea to me now.  Except instead of validating emails, we'd
be validating SMTP relays.  How would it work, though?  Would the relay
have to sign all outgoing emails, or how would we verify the cert's?

--Jason Van Cleve


On 22 Jun 2003 15:37:37 -0700
Ed Sawicki <ed at alcpress.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 2003-06-22 at 15:10, Jason Van Cleve wrote:
> > On 22 Jun 2003 11:34:56 -0700
> > Ed Sawicki <ed at alcpress.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > One way is to assign certificates to the machines that
> > > move the mail. Sites that send spam will have their
> > > certificate revoked. The problem with this is that
> > 
> > Isn't that the same as blocking by IP range or domain name, essentially?
> 
> It may seem like it but there can be substantial differences.
> Spammers get one or more blocks of IP addresses from their
> ISP and move on to other IP addresses as they appear on black
> lists and RBLs. If a spammer has a /24 block, you have to chase
> them through 254 addresses, unless you can find out what block
> they've been allocated and block it all as soon as you discover
> they're spammers. Unfortunately, many ISPs (like rackspace.com)
> are not cooperative - they won't tell you the spammer's block.
> So, you either chase the spammer through his range of addresses
> or you block all the ISP's addresses (as I've done for rackspace). 
> 
> If spammers had to register certificates for their servers
> with some central authority, and this information was publicly
> available, we would be able to revoke all their certificates
> once we discovered they were spammers. It would no longer matter
> what IP addresses they used or that their ISPs are uncooperative.
> Other customers (non-spammers) of uncooperative ISPs would not
> be penalized.
> 
> -- 
> Ed Sawicki <ed at alcpress.com>
> ALC
> 
> 
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