Subject: Re: Proposal to define a simple architecture to differentiate legitimate bulk email from Spam (UBE)

From: Johnny Eriksson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 23:08:48 WET DST

Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > It is not immune to spam, though it distributes spam and other 
> > broadcast
> > messages much more efficiently than typical email systems.
> 
> Ouch! :-)
> 
> Fixable with authentication.

no.

--Johnny

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 23:58:31 +0200

On maandag, sep 8, 2003, at 00:08 Europe/Amsterdam, Johnny Eriksson 
wrote:

>>> It is not immune to spam

> no.

As each individual news article is piped through a relatively small 
number of servers in the "core" of the distribution system, it becomes 
relatively easy to blacklist known offenders. That is, if they are 
recognizable as such. This is where the authentication comes in. The 
tricky part is optimizing the time/difficulty it takes to blacklist vs 
that of obtaining a new identity.

Also note that with usenet news, unlike email, it is possible to remove 
spam that has entered the system, limiting the audience that sees the 
message and thus the effectiveness of spamming.

---

From: Shelby Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 06:22:31 +0800

>that of obtaining a new identity.

Even though this is a good point, I'd prefer to stay off the discussion of authentication, because the proposal need not depend on it, as you point out below...

>message and thus the effectiveness of spamming.

Also bear in mind my point that the whole point of moving legitimate bulk messaging to "pull" is so that spam can be dealt with unambiguously by enforcers on bulk email.  So spam (all remaining *BE) gets reduced by the paradigm switch to "pull" for legitimate bulk messaging.  Since I assume mailing lists would still use email as incoming source primarily, then incoming spam is reduced.  You could certainly switch to a authenticated interface (e.g. https web page) for incoming mailing list traffic, but I think that is unnecessary to my proposal.

Also remember that some portion of legitimate bulk messaging is legitimate (meaning that receivers want it) corporate bulk mailings.  They would also be forced to the "pull" paradigm, but not their normal single messaging, such as the receipt for what you buy on Amazon, only their bulk email.

Shelby Moore
http://AntiViotic.com