Remailer Abuse Solutions

John Willis jmwillis at yooper.switch.rockwell.com
Thu Nov 14 12:15:42 PST 1996


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

...
 
>  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.
> 

...

>  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?






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