[81461] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Economics of SPAM [Was: Micorsoft's Sender ID Authentication......?]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Crocker)
Sat Jun 11 14:56:51 2005
From: Dave Crocker <dhc2@dcrocker.net>
To: Andre Oppermann <nanog-list@nrg4u.com>
Cc: North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes <nanog@merit.edu>
Reply-To: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@bbiw.net>
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 11:56:06 -0700
In-Reply-To: <42A9C232.7050208@nrg4u.com>
X-Songbird-From: dhc2@dcrocker.net
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
> 1a) must be simple so that many million server administrators can
> understand it.
> 1b) must scale to millions of legitimate mail servers.
> 1c) must not break common functionality for users.
Good list.
To repeat the cliche, spam is a social problem. Technical solutions can=
only
follow social decisions. Otherwise, we get technology dictating social=
policy.
As bad as that is as a general rule, it is particularly bad for anything=
involve
large-scale human communications, since the unintended consequences are=
certain
to be massive and massively bad.
Spam (and virus attacks) seem particularly strong requirements for a layered=
defense, some proactive and some reactive. Some involving authors and some=
involving operators.
Being able to white- or black-list an operator legitimately is particularly=
powerful. They represent an aggregation of users and traffic. So the=
leverage
is enormous. Perhaps because the payoff is so high, the dangers of
mis-assignment are also huge. So such listing needs to be done=
conservatively,
which leaves lots of traffic unassigned.
Being able to white-list authors is equally spiffy. In general, formulating=
a
positive trusted core of communicants well might permit high quality service=
for
relatively low costs, such as little or no content analysis, with its=
attendance
statistical failings (false positives).
And so on...
d/
---
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
