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On November 21, 2003 at 12:13, "Patrick J. LoPresti" wrote: > > ADSL and cable are very economical for ISPs and small organizations > > to get connected to the Net. > > Some would argue that spam exists precisely because running a mail > server is so economical. Perhaps it should be more expensive. And risking alienating lower income entities. There is a common mistake that the Net is just another market. In today's society, it is becoming more the de-facto communication media, and those that cannot afford to be on it, are left behind. > Small ISPs and organizations can relay mail via their DSL provider's > servers, just like individuals do. Larger organizations can pay for a > real Internet connection. I see no problem. Politics and democracy. Again, you must look beyond money. And even if looking at money, ISPs have a finanicial interest in using DSL and cable to connect businesses. It is cheaper for them intead of laying out dedicated network cables. Heck, I have regular home cable modem service, and my download speeds are better than most companies I worked for. It is not hard to envision that all "wiring" will be the same for everyone, from large businesses to individual users. Therefore, the distinquish is bandwidth, and ADSL and cable already do this. > > If ISPs have policies about not running servers on personal home > > systems and/or restricting mail traffic to only route through their > > mail server, they can enforce such policies via router > > configurations. > > And the rest of us can help encourage such policies by blocking direct > mail from dynamic ranges :-). I find this view naive. See <http://www.eff.org/Spam_cybersquatting_abuse/Spam/position_on_junk_email.html> You must be careful of the slippery-slope of anti-spam measures to where many can be be abused and inhibit valid uses of the Net. Many measure typically have side-effects of punishing the little guy. I also recommend you check out IETF's Anti-spam Research Group (ASRG) and their list archives. > > However, such configuration would not stop worm-based spam. I.e. A > > worm designed to send spam could easily send mail through the ISP > > MTA by checking the systems outbound MTA setting. Of course, such > > worms would get the attention of ISPs since their servers will be at > > risk of being blacklisted, requiring them to be more proactive at > > contacting customers with infected systems. > > It is actually better than that, because most ISPs now do some sort of > antivirus filtering on their mail servers. Mail viruses is only one attach vector. Many worms attack systems directly (e.g. MS RPC exploits) or through browser (IE) defects. Therefore, mail filtering will not stop these kind of attacks. BTW, mail virus filters only work "after-the-fact". Ie. Systems must get infected, and the detected, for anti-virus vendors to provided updated dat files. And then, it becomes a race condition on how soon people and organization update their dat files before they are infected. Since I am still receiving Swen messages (i.e. the bogus "Microsoft patch" updates), it is clear to me that relying on people to update their dat files is doomed to failure. --ewh _______________________________________________ Gossip mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mail-archive.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gossip
