Subject: RE: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - Pull System (revisited)

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 08:54:52 -0800

It is worth noting that the word spam was coined in response to a failure
that appeared in NNTP, a pull system long before the problem spread to
email.

Specifically it was Dick Depew's ARMM robot...

The issue is not how the bits are shipped. Every email communication is by
its nature initiated by the sender. It is the ability to initiate without
any form of authorization that creates the spam problem. In effect the
sender can consume unbounded respources. I don't see how tweaking the
details of the protocol affects this.

The key issue is communicating the consent to receive. I have previously
made a proposal on this topic - I will repost in RFC format later, that
allows this information to be communicated using the SMTP protocol.

The problem with consent to receive is that it is available only in a very
limited number of circumstances.

		Phill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan DeKok [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 11:25 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - Pull System (revisited) 
> 
> 
> "Chris" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > I would like to re-investigate pull mail systems as a 
> viable solution to
> > reducing unsolicited mail
> 
>   What's wrong with the current system?
> 
>   If you don't know what's wrong with the current system, and why/how
> it's being abused, you have no idea if your re-designed system will
> have the same (or worse) problems.
> 
>   Alan DeKok.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Asrg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg
> 

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---

From: "Chris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 09:36:34 +1030

> that appeared in NNTP, a pull system long before the problem spread to

NNTP does allow a news server to ignore mail originating from known
spam/objectionable sources

it is the CHOICE of news server administrator to accept or deny from a
source

many news servers refuse to accept certain newsgroups

this is an example of a *pull* system functioning perfectly

and a good example of why pull should be a serious contender for use in
e-mail

> details of the protocol affects this.

you miss the point

if the recipient refuses the email it does not even get onto the transport
system

just a small portion of it

In the end this is about giving choice to the recipient!

> limited number of circumstances.

how does one police a "consent to receive"?

---

From: "Peter J. Holzer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 18:39:42 +0100

> and a good example of why pull should be a serious contender for use in

I disagree. NNTP is not generally a pull system. News between servers
are mostly transported with a push system, only clients (and small
servers like leafnode, hamster, etc.) use it as a pull system. This is
very similar to E-Mail: Mails are transported to the user's mail server
with a push system (SMTP) and fetched from there with a pull system
(POP, IMAP). NNTP as a protocol just supports both modes.

There are some differences between SMTP and NNTP feeds:

SMTP is a unicast/multicast (oligocast?) protocol, NNTP is broadcast
protocol. You only have to send a single NNTP message to reach all
readers of a newsgroup, but you have to send a mail message to every
single email address if you want to reach many people. So a newsgroup
spammer sends out at most a few thousand messages (one for each
newsgroup), but a mail spammer sends out millions. NNTP traffic is also
generally public, so it is easy to set up bots which monitor the traffic
and send out cancels, or to set up content filters. I think this is why
Usenet spam died out after some time (at least I see very little Usenet
spam these days - maybe I just read the wrong newsgroups :-).

> just a small portion of it

Which reduces the traffic but not the time users spend. If I only see
the sender address and the subject, I may still have to look at the
content of the message to determine whether it is spam. There's not much
difference whether it is in my local mailbox or on another server
(except that accessing a remote server is slower). OTOH, if my mail
filter has the whole message, it has a very good chance to determine
whether it is spam or not (So I won't have to look at it any more).

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | In this vale
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | Of toil and sin
| |   | [email-masked]         | Your head grows bald
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | But not your chin.           -- Burma Shave