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Re: Anti spam methodologies (is it the new frontier?)




On Tue, 10 Dec 1996, Andy Poling wrote:

> I've thought of a few fairly simple approaches, and I thought I'd see what
> the folks here think.  I would prefer to abort the SMTP session, rather than
> attempting to return the spam mail.
> 
> The first solution that comes to mind is to refuse to accept mail that is
> not either from or to a local IP address/host.  This would be a little
> awkward, since it's not always immediately evident which incoming mail is
> destined for local hosts.  Probably not practical.
> 
> The second solution would be to set (at runtime via a command-line option) a
> maximum number of resipients that we will accept in a single mail message.
> Generally these scum of the earth are lazy and using PCs and they therefore
> like to put a ton of addresses on each individual message.  Since we frown
> upon spamming by internal folks too, and we don't run any mailing lists,
> this looks like an attractive solution.  This solution could be implemented
> entirely within smtpserver without need of any outside intelligence, and
> with minimum code change, since it really just requires a counter around the
> "Rcpt_to" processing.
> 
> Lastly, a sort-of combination of the two might be best: refuse to accept
> more than X recipients from a non-internal IP address.
> 
> A realy simple one I just thought of: if we cannot establish an SMTP session
> back to them (indicating a spamming PC) tell them to shove off.  If we can,
> well.. heh heh... just send it back to 'em. :-)

Andy:

If you truly believe it's a spam and you're about to choke them with it,
try this instead... just say "OK."  Pretend to accept everything and just
drop it.  No mail gets sent and no one gets hurt.  Except maybe the
spammer, who, unless they RCPT TO themselves, won't know that the message
was not sent.  :-)

-timmo

Tim DiLauro                          Milton S. Eisenhower Library
Library Systems Jack                 Johns Hopkins University
(410) 516-5263                       3400 N. Charles Street
timmo@jhu.edu                        Baltimore, MD  21218