Re: [Asrg] New proposal for spam blocking: Greylisting

At 10:49 PM -0600 6/20/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
>I saw some comments about available counter-attacks by spammers, but
>I don't recall seeing a clear description of the easiest.  Spammers
>do not need to do real queuing to get though a greylist.  They need
>only send to the same target list from the same SMTP client a few
>hours after an initial spew.  Mailboxes protected by a greylist will
>accept the second copy.  Other mailboxes will see two copies.  That
>wouldn't be remarkable, because some spammers are already hitting
>individual addresses with several copies per spew.

I agree.  In fact, I think this makes greylisting a very bad idea. 
It magnifies the tragedy of the commons.  Everyone tries to protect 
themselves and ends up making the problem worse for everyone else. 
In the short term it works well for individuals.  As soon as it 
becomes popular, it doubles the spam traffic and solves nothing.
-- 
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/          Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.

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