Re: The spam problem.

Benjamin LaHaise (bcrl@redhat.com)
Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:25:57 -0400

On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 10:50:35AM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> It's already happening. You have no idea how much spam I've
> received "from" Ingo Molnar, Bill Davidsen, Stephen Tweedie
> and you ...
>
> You probably also have no idea from which countries the spam
> with you in the From: address has been sent ;)
>
> Recently an anti-spam mailinglist (with members-only posting)
> got flooded by a spammer who wanted to take revenge for his
> N-th cancelled account. Of course he used From: headers with
> the addresses of many of the list regulars.

The problem requires action on a wider scale where the IETF needs to
propose a new standard that enforces crypto signatures of message
content and From: that is tied into DNS. The current mail standards
do not have any means to prevent forgeries, even for those organizations
that want to avoid such abuses.

-ben

-- 
"You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier."
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