Re: RR DNS and spam

[Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com>]

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Markus Stumpf wrote:

> That depends on how many "not everyone" is. If 80% percent use it
> and you can send mail only to 20% of the Internet if you don't use
> it, the 20% will change rather fast. It's called group pressure.

"group pressure" will alter the spammers, too.  The rest of the "group"
gets tired of jumping through stupid hoops that are provably, and
theoretically pointless from the start.

Your assumption is that spam can only come from not-real-mailservers.
This is a false assumption.  Even so, much real mail also comes from such
"not-real-mailservers". SMTP is a client-server protocol, not a
server-server protocol.  Your proposal is just a way to use DNS to make
SMTP server-server.

> Maybe my English is way too bad ... but what is so hard to understand
> in the wording "I want to get rid of all those millions of hosts that
> nobody (even not the owner) wants to be a publicly acting mailserver,
> but which are abused as mailservers because of e.g. bad maintenance
> or virus infection or cracking".

Your English was fine. The problem is your assumptions about SMTP make
this a useless goal.

> I don't care about spam from official ISP smarthosts NOW, neither do I
> care NOW about spam from hosts having that TXT record set. These admins
> will be lart'd later.

The LART may go the other way.  I'm sure Rob Austein didn't expect to be
LARTed for advocating not putting numeric IP addresses in Recieved:
headers.  Of course, he's tried to deflect the LART by saying there wasn't
anything wrong with IN-ADDR, but that one shouldn't use open relays.
Obviously, history shows he was wrong.  History eventually corrects such
errors.

Most of the anti-spammers trying to use DNS to block spam don't understand
the SMTP protocol and in particular what entities put headers in email
messages. On more than one occasion, seemingly technically experienced
people have failed to understand that the spammer can't modify a header
put in the message after they give it to a mail relay.

> And I really would like it if spammers have to change and can't abuse
> "taken" hosts in the wild any longer and have to use their ISPs
> mailserver, because they have to go through a bottle neck and if the
> ISP doesn't take approriate actions it's easy to put a cork in the neck
> and that's it.

Yes, it would be nice if spammers would just raise their hand and identify
themselves. It would be nicer if spammers would just obey the rules.  Of
course, this is a naive expectation.

		--Dean


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