[thelist] Serious antispam measures

Edwin Horneij edwin at lanset.com
Tue Apr 20 00:04:59 CDT 2004


On Apr 19, 2004, at 6:23 PM, Ken Schaefer wrote:

> Personally, I think there needs to be a more fundamental reform of the
> messaging infrastructure that fixes the spam problem. All these other 
> things
> are good, and should be used as additional layers of defense, but 
> they're
> really bandaids. If you look at all the really robust authentication
> protocols out there (like Kerberos), you don't need these bandaids. 
> They're
> simple, and they work.

I'm curious, given that it would not be technically difficult, why some 
authentication protocol hasn't been implemented. Can you point to a 
site with a primer on the issue? Maybe something for people like me who 
don't really understand how SMTP or email authentication works. TIA.

Another thing I'm curious about is why the authorities don't combat 
spam by punishing the companies that use it to advertise. They have to 
have some real-world point of contact in order to get the recipient's 
money, after all, and they, at least as much as the owner of the server 
where the message originated, are responsible for the email. Is there 
some legal issue I don't understand?



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