vendor spam OTD

Tue Apr 28 21:52:10 UTC 2015

On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:39:12PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
> As more and more "legitimate" companies exploit email as a free
> resource I think we're going to need to broaden the definition of
> spam.

Absolutely not.  The canonical -- and only correct -- definition
is UBE, as Suresh pointed out.  It has served us well for decades
and it continues to do so.

HOWEVER -- there are other forms of abuse carried by SMTP and we have
names for some of those.  If it turns out that yet one more form of
abuse is becoming a problem and thus we need a term to refer to it,
we can and should come up with one.

It's also worth noting that some instances of abuse can be described
by more than one term.  Abusers, unfortunately, can be quite creative
and prolific.

---rsk