Fw: iPermitMail Email Firewall

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rich Braun" <richb at pioneer.ci.net>


> Bill Horne wrote:
> > I don't think so: the mail replies are coming from the recipient, not
> > blu.org. If this is the typical setup, the recipient has
> > forwarded all email to a certain address to the ipermitmail.com server
>
> Ah, perhaps the way to handle this is the same way some folks are handling
the
> dot-com wildcard hijack by VeriSign:  black-hole all email going to a
specific
> IP address.  In this case, the blu.org mailer could be configured with a
map
> entry voiding out anything that resolves to the MX addresses announced by
> ipermitmail.com or ilap.com (or any of the other buggy challenge-response
> antispam services).

I wish we could, but these services usually require that mail be forwarded
to them by the intended recipient, so the BLU Mailman server wouldn't know
which entry on the mailing list is actually going to ipermitmail.

There is a way to discover the address in question, but the cure may be
worse than the disease. We could script a
test mailing to each user on the Mailman database, with a slightly different
return address for each one. Whichever return address gets the challenge
email from ipermitmail would ID the BLU member who was using the service:
the test email
might also serve as a reminder of upcoming events, etc. It's something to
think about, and I recommend we set it up in advance, since we'll probably
need it again.

<SOAPBOX>
This particular problem is (as was pointed out) going to get worse, as the
Internet gets more Balkanized and users retreat into gated communities to
keep the spam barbarians at bay. I don't favor challenge/response systems,
since their business model relies heavily on harvesting email addresses for
sale to others. One was even so bold as to spam those who had answered a
challenge, and it was soon forced out of business, but those that follow
will be more ingenious in their approaches.

I take a different approach: I fight back. I get (no lie) about five pieces
of spam per week on my "private" addresses, because my email addresses are
all on the "don't send to this guy" lists that the chickenboners buy. It's
easy to get there, too: simply complain to every ISP that handles mail from
them, or supplies them webspace, or is used as a relay: the word gets around
so fast that I have to use "sock puppet" addresses just to gather spam to
complain about!
</SOAPBOX>

HTH. YMMV.

Bill Horne
781 784-7287