OT Re: [Nottingham] Re: Tux Games mail is still unread

[Simon Huggins]

On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 05:13:31PM +0100, Mike Cardwell wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2004, Simon Huggins wrote:
> > But it doesn't solve spam.  It just means spammers have to spam with
> > addresses on your whitelist.  So say anyone's address on this list could
> > be used to spam Michael.
> >
> > Challenge Response doesn't really solve /anything/ as far as I can see.
> But the chance of a random spam message to him having been spoofed with
> one of the email addresses on his whitelist is incredibly small...

Until they catch up.  They'll start harvesting groups of addresses.

> I wrote a similar system my self, and it has been very very effective.
> Any email that isn't from someone on my whitelist is filtered through
> spamassassin. Any emails that spamassasin rejects gets filtered into a
> separate mailbox, and the sender is sent an email telling them how to
> add themselves to my whitelist so I will get their email. I go weeks
> without getting a single spam email sometimes.

That sort of whitelisting will allow viruses through unfettered unless
you do some scanning before trusting your whitelist.

> Certainly solved something for me...

And how often do you go through the mails that people don't bother
authorising?

How do you know that someone random hasn't sent you a message that you
would have been interested in that you've just discarded?

I guess coupling it with spamassassin is less of a risk than just
trusting a whitelist but I still find the penalty on the senders of mail
unacceptable.

-- 
Simon  [ huggie at earth.li ] *\        If at first you don't succeed,  \**
****** ]-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-[ **\  destroy all evidence that you tried.  \*
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