TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List)

Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List)

Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Fri, 23 Dec 2005 02:19:02 UTC

In article <telecom24.571.13@telecom-digest.org>,
David Wolff <dwolffxx@panix.com> wrote:

> In article <telecom24.570.8@telecom-digest.org>, Seth Breidbart
> <sethb@panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <telecom24.563.14@telecom-digest.org>,
>> Jim Haynes <jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:

>>> One scheme that seemed to me to have some promise was to detect spam
>>> in the SMTP receiving program and deliberately delay its responses
>>> to the sending program. So that the transaction of sending a message
>>> is stretched out far longer than normal.

>> That's called tarpitting. It would work against spammers who use
>> their own resources to send. Those who use armies of zombies wouldn't
>> care.

> I would think that at least it cuts down on the amount of spam, if
> enough of the zombies get stuck in tarpits.

It would, if access to zombies were the limiting factor. It isn't.

Also, a lot of spam engines are written so that tarpitting doesn't
slow them down (but the machine doing the tarpitting never gets the
message, so there's some benefit there).

Seth

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