[thelist] Re:SPAM: Playing our game instead of theirs

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>
>From: "Samir M. Nassar" <nassarsa at redconcepts.net>
>
>1- Would a multitude of SPAM traps make life harder for spammers?
>2- Can we change the game to suit us?
>3- Are there already methods that kick spammers where it counts?
>4- Is there a reason we ought not to be proactive in fighting SPAM and
>should just build stronger and better RBLs?
>
[clip]
>
>RBL: Relay Blocking List
>
>It blocks known open relays, usually used to send out spam. This way you
>can block mail not only from domains or email addresses, but IP
>addresses as well. 'Block the source, Luke'
>
>More information:
>
>http://www.ordb.org/faq/
>http://www.selwerd.cx/xbl/
>http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml
>http://relays.osirusoft.com/
>http://www.angelfire.com/co2/spamjamr/
>http://spews.org/
>http://www.spamhaus.org/
>
>Some RBLs are open, others are for hire.
>
>One way to get your domain on an RBL is be a sloppy admin and let your
>boxes be used by spammers. But as they say in Germany, Stupidity doesn't
>save you from the police. One way to stay on an RBL is to insult people
>who run RBL's.
>
>Samir M. Nassar
>
Samir:

You've just scratched the surface of this topic, and it is a serious
connectivity and corruption issue for the entire web community not merely a
'harmless' convenience, as it's often falsely portrayed!  While we would
all like to believe that spam-cops would be nice reasonable impartial and
uncorrupted referees in the email monitoring business, nothing could be
further from the truth.

Once empowered by unsuspecting major ISP's, in a genuine attempt to
regulate spam, they then become mafia warlords, blackmailing, coercing,
extorting and causing untold real damage to helpless victims who just
happen to be afflicted by ISP's bound to their 'services'.

The main fault with klutzy RBL technology is that not only are email
messages blocked from delivery, but that in all cases, under the current
systems, the recipient remains totally unaware of what of their private
communications that he/she is NOT receiving, with absoulutely no recourse
to recover possibly valuable and important communications that have been
irresponsibly blocked or destroyed by the often - irresponsible  mafia
warlords who run these petulant, haphazard 'quaranteening' systems.

>One way to stay on an RBL is to insult people who run RBL's. < really?

It's easy to say that they wouldn't be blocked if they didn't do something
wrong, but nothing is further from the truth. This is a reverse con-game
where the RBL'ers hold Hosts and ISPs hostage by arrogantly and haphazardly
punishing their (99% innocent) clients and the general public.

Initially, RBL's fully destroyed the remote SMTP server protocol, making it
impossible for webmasters and website owners to send email 'as' a
personality of their web presence, not because some spam had actually or
once been sent out by this method, but simply because they had snooped and
'found' that it was possible! Is this fair? What about privacy?

Now they have set about the task of blocking perfectly honorable web
hosting businesses who simply host a client website who sells, markets or
links to a site that produces any sort of bulk email software, no matter
how an enduser may employ it! Even if their SMTP does not relay at all!

We need a federal law or regulation or an internet directive that requires
all RBL type 'services' to provide a summary of the communications that
they have blocked and a method by which the helpless end user-recipient can
recover email messages that may have been blocked improperly.

Nobody likes SPAM but the current haphazard solution throws out the baby
with the bathwater and has empowered a new class of internet banditry that
causes a great deal of inconvenience and damage to end-users.

Imagine if you didn't recieve your domain name renewal notices, because of
some stupid, erroneous mailblock, that you were totally unaware of!

Phil Stark
Webdisplays -sites that work!
http://www.webdisplays.com/w