[thelist] Serious antispam measures

[Jeniffer C. Johnson]

> 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.
> 
> Cheers
> Ken


I find this discussion quite interesting. When I initially made my post last
week, it was purely in a moment of steeped frustration. I had HAD it, and
lost my temper, after seeing a dramatic increase in the amount of spam I was
receiving in just the last couple weeks. I was looking for a bandaid (a big
one! lol). 

So, immediate relief via bandaids aside, what CAN be done, long-term, to
resolve the spam issue? I know that there are other individuals who have it
worse than I do, and I know that the bigger picture is even worse. I first
got a good grasp of the Big Picture during the Swen Virus outbreak that hit
sff.net/Greyware last year
(http://www.internetweek.com/security02/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15200576
). Jeffry and Steve had much to say in the aftermath of the attack about the
long-term affects of such traffic to the system as a whole. (I tried to dig
up the posts on the newsgroup where this was discussed, but these posts have
been archived, and an sff.net membership is required to access the
archives.) While they were discussing virus and worm traffic specifically,
it was clear that spam also contributed greatly to the overall amounts of
bad traffic on systems world-wide. Just what would be involved in changing
the way email is handled in order to alleviate this problem?

TIA
Jeniffer



Jeniffer C. Johnson
OffLead Productions
http://www.offlead.com