Comments on: Small change in IMAP Protocol could help reduce SPAM

By: badcam

badcam — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:12:28 +0000

After looking at her, I seem to be building up quite a lot of Spam. No, wait a minute, it seems to be going now…ahhhh…hold on….wait just one more minute…..it’s going!…yes, it’ going now….the Spam is going….going…going……going….Ahhh…GONE…no more spam…Argh!!!……..I feel so much more relaxed now….much better…NO MORE SPAM…

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:58:28 +0000

The idea may be weak if reasonable at all, but to kill the botnets and virus emails by taking out their ‘current’ primary protocol is something worth shooting for. End users, or even network admins, shouldn’t HAVE to have thousands of spam messages hitting their systems. The problem is the botnets not the recipients. Thus far much of the work has been done on the recipient end, that’s a band-aid.

By: mike_c

mike_c — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:09:51 +0000

I agree that the idea posted here is flawed.

But more to the point, that Firefox top is a fake I am afraid. Its a nice bit of Photoshopping.

By: emeryjay

emeryjay — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:40:18 +0000

She reminds me of booth babes John usta talk about. Let’s ask the blog babe. She’s wearing a tight firefox shirt, so she’s bound to be smart.

IMAP?

SMTP?

Personally I think she will favor the IMAP strategy…

By: pjakobs

pjakobs — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:41:36 +0000

what the message of this image? Firefox: it’s about content!

scnr

ps: what was the article about?

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:53:28 +0000

The article is pretty bogus and very narrow minded in how the internet works.

What about those of us who buy DSL connectivity and host our own servers? Should we be filtered and now be forced to do some odd imap connection up to our ISP?

@Mac Guy – I’m glad you don’t get spam. I barely get spam, but I get 20,000 to 100,000 of “bounce back” mail because someone has taken to using my email address to spam. And all those wonderful “Non-Validating Mailsevers” out there are returning errors to me, and not to the botnet clients. (Note it was bad enough and killing my connection at one point I had to move to postini to filter my mail. So I only see maybe 2,000 slip through, and I have procmail rules to filter the rest of the mail. Your fancy RBL wouldn’t resolve this issue. =)

Having folks fix their mailservers so it validates accounts BEFORE accepting mail would go a long ways.

As for stopping spam…. That is impossible without reimplementing everything into a closed/trusted network where spammers can’t hide behind their botnets.

Sadly, the best we can do is filter via RBL, procmail or 3rd party services like postini or whatever John uses.

- Ben

By: Mac Guy

Mac Guy — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:36:37 +0000

Am I the only geek here who thinks this rant is overly-simplistic and lacking a million details? Am I the only geek here who thinks this won’t do a damn thing to the amount of spam being sent?

Four REAL solutions:
1 – Keep your sendmail patched.
2 – Get good filtering on incoming messages. RTBL is the way to go. I get a couple hundred spam messages hitting my server every day, but only 1 or 2 actually make it to my inbox, if that.
3 – Turn off relaying on sendmail, for god’s sake. You don’t need it.
4 – Require authentication on your SMTP server.

I get no spam, and I don’t pay someone like John does.

By: johns

johns — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:09:22 +0000

Don’t you dare reduce… oh spam, ok.

By: jdm

jdm — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:05:38 +0000

A good start, but it doesn’t go far enough. Don’t just isolate SMTTP to servers; all ISPs should switch to Web browser-based email and get rid of POP3 altogether too. The real problem will be the burden on the ISP’s tech support for all the customers whose POP3 email will temporarily break before they change their email client configuration.

The POP3 and SMTP protocols should have been abandoned years ago for a newer version of IMAP that supports true authentication of the sender and verification of the receiver. POP3 and SMTP will never die, but they can fall into grave disuse as so many other outdated Internet protocols have.

By: magicmarkers

magicmarkers — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:58:05 +0000

postfix ftw

smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unauth_pipelining, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_unknown_hostname, reject_invalid_hostname, permit

smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, reject_unauth_destination, reject_multi_recipient_bounce, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unknown_recipient_domain

By: Phillep

Phillep — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:44:31 +0000

Hey, hot chicks are the reason for coming here! MORE MORE MORE. (Bouncy moving gifs work too).

By: Greg Allen

Greg Allen — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:05:11 +0000

See… that’s a problem with this blog’s habit of using any excuse to put a “blog babe” up on any post possible.

Now we’re talking about the picture, instead of the issue.

The open-source community reminds me of my Democratic leadership. They carp and whine but they don’t solve the problems when they have some power.

Finally with Linux, Apache, Thunderbird, etc the Open Source community could be a real agent for change — and FINALLY fix the crazy openness of Internet communications, leading to spam, spoofing, scams, fraud, etc.

C’mon Geeks! This is your chance to save the world! Step up!

For starters, encrypt and sign all our email, by default, transparently. Seems like this proposals here is a good tool for the signing.

By: BlackCat40

BlackCat40 — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:32:43 +0000

#1
I agree. If it were a really tight Thunderbird shirt then it would make sense.

By: Uncle Ben

Uncle Ben — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:32:16 +0000

Oh ‘comon, Mike, the relevance of the image is obvious! The girl is wearing a Firefox shirt, and Firefox also make Thunderbird, an email client, is often used to connect to SMTP servers …. okay, maybe its not that obvious…. still, she has a kindly face, and besides, surely if that young lady ask you close port 25 in favour of port 587, you’d agree….

By: Greg Allen

Greg Allen — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:29:49 +0000

Let’s get’er done! Do it, tech guys.

I think I got my first spam about fifteen years ago and it’s crazy that the problem hasn’t been solved yet.