Re: [Asrg] In case anyone thought Barry was exaggerating

Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
>   In late December, I got an account at clss.net that allows end-users
> to set up individual blocklist selections and whitelists.  Processing
> takes place just after RCPT:, and rejections consist of the big 550, not
> the mailbombing of innocent 3rd-parties that have been forged as the
> "From:" address.

  In the past few weeks, I've started receiving a number of such
idiot bounces every day, to all of my public email addresses.

> My spam count on this account has gone down from multiple spams per
> day to multiple days between spams.

  Wonderful.  Does this work for AOL?  Nortel?  Hotmail?  Striker?

  Not really.  (Or, not without substantial cost.)  And what do you do
when the spam load goes up by a factor of 10, as it will?

  If such a solution could get rid of the vast majority of spam, then
we wouldn't need ASRG.  But it can't, and it won't scale to the
future.  As previous discussions on ASRG have shown, the amount of
spam can increase by a factor of 10 to 100, before it starts to
dominate the network.

>   As far as I'm concerned, my problem has been almost 100% cured.

  Then why are you not asking for ASRG to be disbanded?

>  That cure is available to others.

  If it's a general solution, then ASRG is not needed, and you should
ask the IRTF to disband it.  If you're not going to do that, then I'm
confused as to why you're here.

>   If you've got minor cuts, bandaids *ARE* the appropriate solution.

  Did you read *any* of my messages about the spam problem at my
striker.ottawa.on.ca domain?

  I heard opinions like yours over 3 years ago.  "Striker is unusual,
my spam load is managable, the spam problem of Striker will never
happen to me."  Now, 3 years later, the *same* people are on record as
complaining about their spam load, and that something needs to be
done.  They're getting the spam traffic today that I was getting THREE
YEARS ago.

  And their attitude is still "Striker is unusual, it won't happen to
me."

  Do these people have any intention of learning from history?  If
ASRG had started up 3 years ago, we might have had a workable solution
by now.

> Some of the suggested cures are worse than the disease.  Since we're on
> this patient-doctor analogy, let me remind you of Hippocrates'
> admonition "First, do no harm".  I'm willing to endure short-term pain
> for long-term gain, but I do want improvement that makes it worthwhile.

  Fine.  I'll point my MX at some IP you control.  After the box falls
over, your ISP will call, and ask for more money for the gigabytes of
bandwidth usage.

  And you're telling me that filtering after RCTP TO's is a solution?
By all means... wait 3 years, and it won't be.  That's why we needed
ASRG 3 years ago, and that's why we need it today.

  Alan DeKok.

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