hi-tech ROT-13

[Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM]

Bill Stewart <stewarts at ix.netcom.com> writes:
> At 05:37 PM 4/1/97 -0500, Andy Dustman wrote:
> >consider this a compromise between normal blocking (deliver unless told
> >otherwise) and middleman (get someone else to deliver it), which I would
> >sum up as: Ask permission before delivering the first time, and once
> >granted, deliver until told otherwise.
>
> An alternative approach is
> - ask before delivering _every_ time, unless
> - accept deliver-without-asking-again responses to cookies.
> This leaves the recipient the middle ground of
> granting permission for one message without granting it for all future
> messages, which is probably good for people unfamiliar with remailers.
> (Also, the permission-once == permission-always model doesn't stop
> spamming - a spammer can send a whole bunch of messages to the recipient,
> and if the recipient's response to the first "You have anon-mail" cookie is
> "That's interesting, let's see what it is", they get all the spam.)

I got a 60MB mailbomb the other day which didn't bother me a least bit.
That wasn't done via the remailers; it came via worldnet.att.net's open
smtp server. The initial form letter asking for permission should warn
about the possibility of their getting a large amount of crap. However
it's just as easy to get a throwaway account and mailbomb someone via
that.

I say: discard (don't keep) e-mail for folks who haven't explicitly
unblocked themselves;
treat "unblock" as "unblock everything and face the consequences".

Letting the user impose some sort of constraint on the size of the
e-mail being remailed is actually a dumb idea:
* any half-decent mail handler should do it on the user's side
* they can be mailbomed by a 1000 little messages


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Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps