Re: [Asrg] Consensus Call - submission via posting (was Re: Iteration #3)

"Andrew Richards" <ar-asrg@acrconsulting.co.uk> Mon, 08 February 2010 19:18 UTC

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Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:19:06 +0000
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From: Andrew Richards <ar-asrg@acrconsulting.co.uk>
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Subject: Re: [Asrg] Consensus Call - submission via posting (was Re: Iteration #3)
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On Monday 08 February 2010 18:05:06 Chris Lewis wrote:
> Andrew Richards wrote:
> > What bugs me about [1] is that the whole message is being re-sent, but
> > we seem to have established that the only thing a spam button will be
> > saying is "This is spam/unwanted", so sending a report including the
> > original email for basically a single bit of information seems
> > excessive.
> 
> In general, it isn't a "single bit of information", especially if you
> consider that this mechanism will undoubtably used to feed outsourced
> handlers who don't see your inbound mailstream at all.
> 
> Think SpamCop for example.
> 
> I'm not sure why "exessive [volume]" is a particular concern.

Okay, let me rephrase that to "not elegant"

> For the
> most part complaints are relatively rare, and this is only on that
> fraction that doesn't already get zapped by the filters. We're
> exceptional in the former (getting as much as 10-20% of all spam getting
> past the filters being reported as full forwards), but nobody has ever
> noticed the flow operationally.

An example where this might be noticeable:
Bob receives a multi-megabyte email (with attachment etc) and decides to 
press the TiS button. He's on a modest ADSL or dial-up link, so if he 
returns the whole message in a report this will temporarily impact on his 
bandwidth which he may well notice. If instead just a few packets are used 
to communicate the unwanted UIDL / MessageID he'll not be troubled.

I think this is where elegance (= lightweight on bandwidth) helps in this 
situation. At the same time I grant that this would be introducing an 
additional burden on MTAs to store messages where they may not be doing so 
at present.

> If you posit 100% "hit the TiS button", 100% spam, and _no_ filtering
> whatsoever, your outgoing from the user equals your incoming to the
> user.  But if you're in a situation like that, one wonders why you have
> mail service or users at all.

cheers,

Andrew.