Re: [Asrg] SMTP pull anyone?

I don't see how push or pull fundamentally changes the spam
equation in any case. The problem wrt spam is the any-any nature
of who you receive communication from, not who initiates the
connection.

I can create a walled garden trivially with smtp just be rejecting
connections from people not on my whitelist. Likewise, anything that
is promiscuous with who it receives from better be prepared for
mail-transmitted diseases (MTD's). That's just the nature of opening
up. So SMTP itself isn't the problem, or more specifically fretting
about SMTP is nipping around the edges of 20 with the 80-20 rule.

Mike

On 08/16/2009 03:29 PM, John Levine wrote:
>>> SMTP is currently a push protocol and is initiated by the the
>>> sender, no controlling that fact.
>
>>> But it is possible to overcome the relay problems, IP spoofing and
>>> domain impersonation etc,
>
>>> by making the servers pull the mails.
>
>> US6192407
>
> Ah, right, the famous Tumbleweed patent.  Here's a better link
> with a readable version.
>
> http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6192407
>
> This patent covers the idea of putting a message on a web server and
> sending the recipient a URL to retrieve the message.  Tumbleweed
> enforces it very aggressively.  See the list of suits in their
> Wikipedia page.
>
> Were it not for the patent, I expect we'd have a lot of institutions
> setting up per-user password protected RSS or Atom feeds with
> statements and other messages, and sending you mail telling you to
> check your feed when there's something new.
>
> R's,
> John
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