X-Sender: ph@netcom15.netcom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 17:07:41 -0800 To: cypherpunks@toad.com From: ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) Subject: Remailer Abuse Solutions Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com Precedence: bulk

What do you do if you are operating a remailer and somebody complains they are getting spammed? That's easy, you keep a list of people that you don't send mail to. What's hard is if that person wants to receive other anonymous mail.

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This also eliminates the spam problem generally. If you are plagued by spam, create a list of names you will accept mail from. When a message comes in that is not on the list, return a message directing them to send you the mail through a paying remailer.

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The solution: don't accept anonymous mail. Only people on the "approved" list would be allowed to post. People who wish to post anonymously could then send mail through the paying remailer to people on the "approved" list and request that their message be relayed. Most people on the list would be happy to accept a dollar or two to provide this service. This would eliminate inappropriate mail while allowing anybody to post.

I don't know if this has been covered before... Why not incorporate an approved senders list function in mail readers? (Or at least accomodate a plug-in?) Have the mail reader keep a history of all addresses ever mailed to. These will automatically be approved, unless you later delete them from the list. If you are on a listserv of whatever nature and you want to receive mail from list readers off the list, have the mail reader update the approved list by querying (when?) the addresses of those on the list. If you post to a usenet group, and you want off-group mail from the group's readers, have the mail reader grab a list of addresses of people who have posted on that newsgroup. Continue to use a kill file to kill the spammers from listserv and usenet address sources. These are just general suggestions which could hooked up as options by mailing list, newsgroup, etc. What do you think?