Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button idea is pre-failed

[Alessandro Vesely <[e-mail]>]

On 02/Mar/10 14:40, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>
>> This is a *summary* and not an attempt to provide every nuance of every argument, so nitpicking is discouraged.  You may rest assured that I read the traffic on this list and have been paying close attention to the spam problem for the past several decades. ;-)
>
> This message ignores the existence of TIS buttons on existing MUAs for webmail operators, and the actual experience that those operators have.

In addition, it apparently assumes that users send reports directly to 
spammers.

>> 5. Duplicates existing functionality
>>
>>     All competently-run sites support the RFC 2142-stipulated
>>     "abuse" role address and have appropriately experienced,
>>     trained, qualified and diligent staff reading every message
>>     sent there.  It's trivially easy for any user to forward
>>     questionable mail traffic (with full headers of course) to
>>     the abuse address of their own mail provider, who can then
>>     decide what to do about it.  These personnel are far better
>>     situated to decipher headers, correlate against logs,
>>     assess threat severity, etc.  They're also much less likely --
>>     presuming that they're competent -- to hand over useful
>>     information to the enemy.  See next point as well.
>>
>
> I have never gotten a usefull spam complaint from a user, but it isn't because the messages weren't spam. It was always because the user didn't include the headers. All users find it difficult to include headers with forwarded messages, and will always drop the issue when asked to resend with headers. The TIS button solves this problem.

+1, we're just talking about a neat and convenient tool to send 
complaints. Extra optimizations, such as using an IMAP flag to 
simultaneously synchronize with server's Bayesian data, move a message 
to a different folder, _and_ send the complaint, are possible for more 
competent users.

If spammers want to abuse abuse@ mailboxes, they can do so now, 
without having to wait for those buttons. The button makes that job 
easier for the user. The spammer (or 0wner) probably has easier ways.