elind Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 I wonder if anyone has an answer for why most spam could not be eliminated fairly easily if providers simply applied the same filter to outgoing mail as we do to incoming? Obviously some can't be bothered, but it seems such a simple solution for what is a big problem, that one could think it might be an enforceable requirement by the community. What am I missing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 if providers simply applied the same filter to outgoing mail as we do to incoming? What am I missing? 31339[/snapback] Whose filters are you going to use? What if someone actually wants that message? Some ISP's are doing that and causing problems with spamcop users who want to report the spam they receive because either the attached spam or the entire message is dropped, never reaching the parser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jank1887 Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 same filter to outgoing mail as we do to incoming?31339[/snapback] Some do. but here's a question: how much spam gets through your filters? How often do you have to adjust your filters because spammers figured out how to squeeze through the cracks? The same thing would happen if it was filtered at the source. And how many false positives would be tolerable? It's one thing for you to decide how strict your spam filters are, but now the sending ISP has to make that call for everyone on the receiving end of a single email run. See E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP for an example. edit: yar, Mr. Underwood be a mite bit faster with his there trigger finger... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elind Posted August 5, 2005 Author Share Posted August 5, 2005 Some do. but here's a question: how much spam gets through your filters? How often do you have to adjust your filters because spammers figured out how to squeeze through the cracks? The same thing would happen if it was filtered at the source. And how many false positives would be tolerable? It's one thing for you to decide how strict your spam filters are, but now the sending ISP has to make that call for everyone on the receiving end of a single email run. See E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP for an example. edit: yar, Mr. Underwood be a mite bit faster with his there trigger finger... 31344[/snapback] That was a good link to a past thread. So some people do "filter" outgoing mail, but it appears in an often incompetent manner. What's the point of deleting what might be spam email, without blocking the sender completely, if that is what is believed? There may be millions of emails to process but there are not millions of senders in any given day, so identifying them first can't be an impossible task, if there was a will. I think they like the traffic. As to stopping legitimate mail; it seems to me that anyone who send to a legitimate mail list should be smart enough to do so without triggering the filters and if they get blocked from time to time, is that a worse problem than living with spam? Individual small mailings don't have to be blocked, even if they look like spam. I know that smarter people than me have given this a lot of thought, but I would still like to learn why the solutions appear so hard (or simple), so comments are appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff G. Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 Let's just say that there are a lot of email admins out there that don't have a firm grasp of the issues, snake-oil salespeople selling them "solutions", and designers/programmers building "solutions" that will sell, but will not necessarily make the admins, the users, and the Internet at large better (all at the same time). Blocking (either via bitbucket or bounce) all outgoing email that looks like it could be or contain spam, while it is nice for the Internet and reduces the likelihood of SCBL listings, impedes the "submit spam to SpamCop via email" capability and loses mail, unless exceptions are made for certain senders, spam.spamcop.net as a recipient subdomain, or both. Blocking (either via bitbucket or bounce or filtering to a spam folder) all incoming email that looks like it could be or contain spam, while it keeps inboxes clean, impedes SpamCop Reporters that want to do the right thing and can lose messages, unless exceptions are made for certain recipients that want to report spam directed to them, want copies of SpamCop Reports and other reports of spam, and want copies of SpamCop Quick Reporting Data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jank1887 Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 Individual small mailings don't have to be blocked, even if they look like spam.31379[/snapback] What's your cutoff for a small mailing? Remember that a large portion of spam is coming from people's computers that are unwittingly acting as mail relays for the spam, or who have virus infected computers, etc. So, the next round of spam would just be sent out in small batches from lots of computers, rather than large batches from a single computer, and that would get around that filter concept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...indpost&p=27218 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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