[KLUG Members] Spammers: The best defence is a good offense

[members@kalamazoolinux.org]

Adam and Orien have both written about some good sources for a couple 
of technical fixes for spam; I've looked at ORDB and the link Orien 
posted at voltar.org, and they are useful tools, and they do go some
ways to discouraging SPAM...

I like to ORDB approach, because it's a way of discouraging sloppy con-
figurations, which let spammers exploit other servers. THe other methods
are more or less effective, procmail probably less so. sendmail.org and
the ORDB site show how to put some additonal checking and filtering in
place...

BUT...

They lack something; they are fundamentally defensive in nature. They
block spam, they suppress it, but they do not take offensive action.
The tools I was referring to are informational in nature, and deprive
spammer of his most vital tool, a place to work from. I have collected
a large number of messages from ISPs confirming that the spammer has
been identified and removed from their system. This is the outcome I
prefer, where there is no spammer, there is no problem. 

"But Bob, they can sign up elsewhere!" Yes, that's true, they can, and
when they spam me again, I'll get them kicked off THAT service as well!
I don't want to run filters, or check e-mail headers, or see spam clut-
ter up the net, or take up net bandwidth with traffic of any kind. I
would prefer to have no spammers, and no spam.

This approach got results, too. I used to get spam at the rate of 100/day,
and I got it down to about 2 per WEEK. Then I got some domains, and the
spam is back...but I've got it down from about 30/day to about 5/day now,
in about 6 weeks. perhaps, in another 6 weeks, I'll have it down to less
than half of that. At the same time, I've collected more "spammer swatted"
messages from ISPs.

Taking the offensive means getting rid of spam to others, too. Eliminating
spammers, or forcing them to move from one place to another, eliminates
the sources of spam, for a lot of people. The most effective solution to 
this problem is not keeping it off your own property, but working to 
eliminate it from the net. I have sometimes visualized that there is a 
database that spammers use as a "do not spam these addresses" list. I'm
not sure that one exists, but I want to be a highly ranked entry on that
list, and I feel all of the people reading this message would like to 
compete with me for that ranking, too! :) I don't think filtering is 
the way to get there.

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---