[IP] more on 4 Rivals Almost United on Ways to Fight Spam
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-0406@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 28, 2004 8:14:58 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, 'Ip' <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: John R Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on 4 Rivals Almost United on Ways to Fight Spam
{Once again, I’m erring on the side of brevity so as not to run afoul
of short attention spans (the readers’ and my own)}
I’ve just run afoul of http://njabl.org and, according to its site “Do
not email asking for removal of dynablock entries unless we have
incorrectly listed an IP as dynamic that is not. IPs that really are
dynamic will not be removed.”
The problem is that the static IP address is a major bug in the
Internet (as I’ve been pointed out) – it doesn’t scale for routing and
adding more dependence upon the static address seems to make it
increasingly difficult to make the Internet dynamic. It also adds more
mechanism and social policy in the heart of the network and builds on
top of the DNS which is a failed (though noble) attempt to provide a
stable identifiers for a potentially dynamic Internet.
I looked at http://spf.pobox.com and in my initial reading I find the
approach to have serious problems. It seems to create complex
mechanisms for policing the heart of the Internet. When I read about
reputation systems and community banishment I get very afraid. It seems
to be one more attempt to build upon the accidental properties of a
mechanism rather than stepping back and looking for an end-to-end
solution such as using capabilities and encryption (why do we send
email in the clear anyway?)
Design committees that care too much tend to self-select for those who
accept the basic assumptions. The press loves to tout the latest
solution for what bothers their readers and thus adds credibility to
what are merely unproven proposals. Andre Maginot’s “solution” is very
appealing with its promise to keep the bad guys out (similar to what
Maxwell’s Daemon promises?).
In the long term such efforts are merely annoying since we will deploy
end-to-end approaches but in the short and medium term it can do real
damage by adding more impediments to making effective use of the
Internet.
Sure, spam is a pain. My computer gets 10,000 to 20,000 messages today
– good thing most are for bogus addresses. I’m not ready to give up on
social solutions since there actually do seem to be a finite number of
prime spam sources generating a huge number of nearly identical
messages. The latest offering me a “degre” (I had to trick Word into
allowing the misspelling!) And, of course, there are the phishing
messages. Such is the price we pay for a vibrant connected ecology.
Ultimately, however, taking control at the edge is in the spirit of the
Internet though, I guess, it shouldn’t be called the Internet since we
will be connecting the end points themselves rather than just LANs.
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