Subject: Re: Argh. the spam.. make it stop...

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 99 12:31:37 GMT

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Gentlefolk -- funny, how the same topic gets recycled so often....

Relays are a terrible idea in practice!  They are left over from the old
X.400, usenet, fidonet, and bitnet days.

SMTP is much better as an End-To-End protocol!

Where, oh where, have the end-to-end folks gone?

If spam becomes a problem again on _this_ IETF list, just require
everyone to PGP sign their messages!

Spam blocking at open relays was a simple short term solution.  It is
not as useful in the end-to-end Internet.  Why are we discussing forcing
everyone to go through relays, just to make them easier to filter?

Requiring SMTP clients to have at least one relay in their mail path is
a Very Bad Idea.  It is a bad idea currently implemented in Eudora and
Messenger, but not in most useful mail clients.  (I don't find having to
re-type the SMTP server in the configuration panel for each message
destination before sending to be very user-friendly at all.)

My home ISP (Merit) does not offer relay service -- none at all!

Many of the Merit affiliated organizations have relays for their
specific students and faculty, because those persons need them for
Eudora or Messenger, but they are often ill-maintained and/or open
relays.  (Hopefully, the one you find in this message is well maintained.
If not, please let me know, so I can tell them.)

My away ISP (WaterValley Interchange) offers relay service to IP
addresses specially configured, and for a very limited time after
POP'ing email.  It is of little or no use to me at home.

As for the latter, I can make it do pretty much whatever I want for
policy, since I'm an owner, and I _still_ don't find it useful at home!

I don't think that forcing everyone to go out and start their own ISP is
a particularly good (or likely) scenario anyway (although with the
number springing up, it seems like everybody _is_ starting their own ISP
;-)  You'll get even more badly maintained open relays.

Those relays will be on ISDN lines, xDSL, cable modems, and good
old-fashioned dialup, all with variable IP addresses, and you won't be
able to filter them anyway.

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From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Mar 1999 12:31:00 -0500

> everyone to PGP sign their messages!

That doesn't help. We'll only end up with PGP signed spam, with the
spammers generating nonce keys so they can get past the blocks.

Perry

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From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Mar 1999 12:31:00 -0500

Perry