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

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:28:51 -0700 (MST)

The Benchmark Print spammer has been around for several years.

> From: "Larry Masinter" <[email-masked]>
> ...

> the client relay through their ISP's mail relay system has several
> problems. For example, in trying to find a workaround for Internet
> Fax machines that want ESMTP support for DSN (to get message 
> confirmation), it seemed reasonable to expect that a client that
> cared about immediate delivery might very well run a SMTP client
> over dialup. From RFC 2532:
> ...

What can such a client do with SMTP that cannot also be done with an
additional, initial hop through POP, IMAP or some other MTA-MUA protocol?
So how is such filtering a real inconvenience?  If the hop through your
ISP's SMTP server takes more than a few minutes, you should do the
obvious--fire your ISP.

Besides, and with appologies to the authors of RFC 2532, sending a FAX
through SMTP is even less interesting than the hand wringing and whining
10 or 15 years about how everyone was using FAX instead of email, that
FAX might replace email, and could we build email-FAX gateways.  There
are many older, much better, more standard, essentially universally
available ways to send pictures through SMTP or other network links.
Sending a FAX of pure text through a TCP connection in 1999 when everyone
has SMTP, HTTP, and even FTP is one of the more amazing pointy-haired
exercises and ranks with RFC 1149.

Then there is what economic reality says about how many boxes will ever
be able to convert a FAX to SMTP or vice versa.  How many would buy
hardware or software to send FAX's over SMTP when they can more easily
scan and send documents with their current equipment, and be vastly more
confident that their correspondent will be able to deal with the message?

> Blocking dialup SMTP doesn't seem like it's the right long-term
> solution to a dialup terms-of-service abuse.

I agree that it would be better technically and administratively more
effective if ISP's would actually enforce their terms of service.  Some
ISP's that generated a lot of spam 18 months ago imposed real penalties
and instantly stopped having spam problems.

Many ISP's running dialups filter TCP SYN's addressed to port 25 from
their customers to prevent spam and other email abuse.  Reportedly some
filter all port 25 SYNs while others allow connections to their own SMTP
servers.  UUnet has been promising for months that realsoonnow they will
also filter connections to port 25 from their dialups.  For much longer,
UUnet has been advising the rest of the Internet to reject all SMTP
connections from their dialups.  So many SMTP servers use private black
lists or global tools such as http://maps.vix.com/dul/ that regardless of
what might you might prefer, it is insane to hope to use dialups to reach
most SMTP servers.  Once practices such as dial-up filtering become
established, they last forever.

Finally, the main IETF list gets very little simple spam.  There is far
more junk (esp. kook) mail that could be avoided by rejecting everything
from the large free email providers such as Hotmail.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: "Larry Masinter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 10:51:57 PST

> additional, initial hop through POP, IMAP or some other MTA-MUA protocol?

ESMTP/DSN (RFC 1891).

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From: "Larry Masinter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 10:51:57 PST

ESMTP/DSN (RFC 1891).

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From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:47:20 -0600

>  How many would buy

Quite a few actually .. but you have to remember that fax is not
necessarily the transmission of messages.. it is the transmission of
documents.  A document might contain a message but a message not a
"document".  Its a subtle difference but important in many legal instances.

Richard Shockey
Shockey Consulting LLC                  
8045 Big Bend Blvd. Suite 110    
St. Louis, MO 63119
Voice 314.918.9020
Fax   314.918.9015
INTERNET Mail & IFAX : [email-masked]
eFAX 815.333.1237  
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From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:47:20 -0600

Richard Shockey
Shockey Consulting LLC