Paul's Mailfrom (Was: IETF SMTP Working Group Proposal at

Tue Aug 27 21:42:28 UTC 2002

At 7:43 AM +0000 2002/08/27, Paul Vixie wrote:

>                           i doubt they will comment in detail here, since
>  the actual numbers are likely to be some kind of internal secret.  i know
>  i get far less spam from AOL than i used to, and i've assumed that this
>  is because they decided to address the costs at the front end (in their
>  service model) rather than the back end (in endless cleanup.)

	They have implemented a lot of internal controls for users of the 
AOL client.  For dial-up users trying to directly transmit mail, they 
have to pass through the transparent SMTP proxy which the AOL 
personnel set up and explicitly requested that it be added to the 
MAPS RBL.

	So, one way they have to deal with the AOL internal controls, and 
the other way they are already blacklisted.

>  no solution which does not progressively leverage the combined small
>  efforts of millions of spam victims will ever be measurably effective other
>  than in some small locality and/or for some brief instant.  see the DCC
>  for an example (http://dcc.rhyolite.com/) of how to build and apply that
>  leverage.  (i'm not giving the reference to vipul's razor because i said
>  "millions.")

	Indeed, that is a cool idea.  I definitely want to look into that 
a lot more closely.  Perhaps we can combine this with deep blacklist 
checking (beyond just the first hop), tagging, and Bayesian content 
filtering.  Perhaps then we will have a temporary pass at a 
semi-decent anti-spam filter.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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