IBM to offer service to bounce unwanted e-mail back to the

Wed Mar 23 20:54:10 UTC 2005

On Mar 23, 2005, at 12:37 PM, RSK wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 10:24:37AM -0800, Andreas Ott wrote:
>> http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/22/technology/ibm_spam/
>
> If this write-up is accurate,

It's not. From the http://www.aunty-spam.com website:

IBM Not Spamming Spammers! FairUCE is About Fair Use, Not Abuse!

Did you hear? IBM is spamming spammers! It’s all over the Internet, and  
tongues are a’wagging! Except, it ain’t so. IBM is not spamming  
spammers.

  Whether you think that spamming spammers is right or wrong, IBM ain’t  
doing it, and shame on CNN for getting it so wrong, and making IBM look  
so irresponsible, and in league with the likes of Lycos’ “Make Love Not  
Spam” DOSsing Screensaver program, and the notorious Mugu Maurauder  
bandwidth sucking program.

You can’t really blame the folks who read CNN’s horribly wrong piece  
for spreading the rumour, after all it was quite sensationalist:

“Spamming spammers?
IBM to offer service to bounce unwanted e-mail back to the computers  
that sent them.
  March 22, 2005: 12:22 PM EST

  NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - IBM unveiled a service Tuesday that sends  
unwanted e-mails back to the spammers who sent them.

The new IBM (Research) service, known as FairUCE, essentially uses a  
giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. E-mails  
coming from a computer on the spam database are sent directly back to  
the computer, not just the e-mail account, that sent them.”

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

About the only thing which the article got right is that the program is  
called “FairUCE". FairUCE, according to IBM’s own FairUCE website,  
readily available for anyone to read (cough…CNN reporters..cough), is a  
“spam filter that stops spam by verifying sender identity instead of  
filtering content".

Let’s say that again: FairUCE is a spam filter that stops spam by  
verifying sender identity instead of filtering content.

If FairUCE can’t verify sender identity, then it goes into  
challenge-response mode, sending a challenge email to the sender, to  
which the sender must reply, to demonstrate that it is not a spambot  
sending the mail in question, but a real live person.

Here is IBM’s explanation of how the FairUCE system works:

“Technically, FairUCE tries to find a relationship between the envelope  
sender’s domain and the IP address of the client delivering the mail,  
using a series of cached DNS look-ups. For the vast majority of  
legitimate mail, from AOL to mailing lists to vanity domains, this is a  
snap. If such a relationship cannot be found, FairUCE attempts to find  
one by sending a user-customizable challenge/response. This alone  
catches 80% of UCE and very rarely challenges legitimate mail.”

  Now, being kind, it’s possible that the good folks at CNN mistook the  
sending of the challenge for “spamming the spammer"....

(Rest at  
http://www.aunty-spam.com/ibm-not-spamming-spammers-fairuce-is-about- 
fair-use-not-abuse/)

Anne