Subject: Re: [Asrg] 0.General - News Article - NYT Reports Porn Spam Hijacking Network

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 21:36:15 -0400

At 06:07 PM 7/15/2003 -0400, mathew wrote:

>On Tuesday, July 15, 2003, at 08:47 AM, Alan DeKok wrote:
>>mathew <[email-masked]> wrote:
>....
>>   Spam filtering on outbound messages is perfectly permissible in many
>>cases, and legally required in many.  Do you really think that it's
>>legally acceptable for businesses to allow their employees to send
>>(whatever illegal content) to each other, or to people outside of the
>>company?
>
>So you're proposing that ISPs be required to run something like 
>SpamAssassin on all *outgoing* e-mail, and bounce e-mail back at the user 
>if it looks like spam?
>
>I see a problem with that--will users accept it, or will they take their 
>money elsewhere? I know that when *I* send an e-mail, I expect it to be 
>sent--if my ISP bounces it back because they don't like the content, it's 
>time for me to find another ISP.

Sometime back Mike Rubel proposed implementing a rate limit on outgoing 
messages (see 
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/asrg/current/msg04616.html). 
If too many messages are sent within a set amount of time, they are held in 
queue and a message is sent to the ISP subscriber warning him about a 
possible infection. Same can apply to too many outgoing spam messages (see 
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/asrg/current/msg04629.html). 
A sample warning would be as follows:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Dear customer,

     We apologize for this intrusion.

     Our systems indicate that your computer attempted to send a large
     number of emails over the last ten minutes.  Because unusually
     large volumes of outbound email sometimes indicate the presence of
     a computer virus, we wanted to check with you before proceeding.
     These and further emails will be placed in a temporary
     quarantine while we await your instructions.  We respect your
     privacy, and will not read or otherwise disclose the messages
     without your permission.

     Please call (800) 123-4567 at your earliest convenience so that
     we may process your request without further delay.  We appreciate
     your business and look forward to serving you again in the future.

                        --Your friendly email service providers
     To change your notification settings, please go to:
     https://www.exampleisp.com/my_account_settings/web_form.php
------------------------------------------------------------------------  

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---

From: "C. Wegrzyn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:30:56 -0400

Yakov,

 Wouldn't the proposal by Mike only work with someone sending to a 
single site? I am confused as to how my SMTP can be throttled when I 
spurt emails to a number of MTAs? Is this something an ISP has to implement?

Chuck Wegrzyn

Yakov Shafranovich wrote:

>> SpamAssassin on all *outgoing* e-mail, and bounce e-mail back at the 
>> user if it looks like spam?
>>
>> I see a problem with that--will users accept it, or will they take 
>> their money elsewhere? I know that when *I* send an e-mail, I expect 
>> it to be sent--if my ISP bounces it back because they don't like the 
>> content, it's time for me to find another ISP.
>
>
> Sometime back Mike Rubel proposed implementing a rate limit on 
> outgoing messages (see 
> If too many messages are sent within a set amount of time, they are 
> held in queue and a message is sent to the ISP subscriber warning him 
> about a possible infection. Same can apply to too many outgoing spam 
> messages (see

---

From: "C. Wegrzyn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 07:31:14 -0400

Yakov,

 Wouldn't the proposal by Mike only work with someone sending to a 
single site? I am confused as to how my MAT can be throttled when I 
spurt emails to a number of different MTAs? Is this something an ISP has 
to implement?

Chuck Wegrzyn

---

From: Philip Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:08:24 -0400

> spurt emails to a number of MTAs? Is this something an ISP has to 

The assumption is that most users send mail through their ISP's MTA[s]. 
For users who run their own SMTP servers, clearly this would require 
much greater resources to implement, along with deceiving the user's 
SMTP server into thinking that mail has reached its destination host.

Philip Miller