[lug] Getting mail out of the Qwest/MSN mire

[Nate Duehr]

Bear Giles wrote:

> As for whether they're loathesome... it's their decision.  Nobody wants 
> to drop valid messages, but there's a very real cost for spam and it's 
> never somebody's only choice.  As Sean indirectly mentioned there's also 
> a real cost to have sysadmins manually block DUL blocks that originate 
> spam -- and that approach can still incorrectly block legitimate senders.

The whole idea behind unauthenticated, unencrypted mail services still 
being used for real business in the year 2006, is loathesome, really.

If all the effort that's been put into DUL's, filters, real-time 
tracking/monitoring of spam, heuristics, etc... had all been put into 
the root-cause of the problem... mail is not authenticated end-to-end...

There wouldn't be any spam.  Fix the root cause.

Every mail server that touches a message should also digitally 
sign/stamp the message.

All it would take is a large organization (U.S. Government, would be a 
REALLY good one) saying, "We're going to use this Encryption technique, 
and any mail arriving unencrypted... we're throwing away."

It would have to be a company or government organization big enough that 
people HAVE to communicate with them... and the flood of "realization" 
would start, and other companies and individuals would follow suit.

Companies set up VPN connections for critical business data between one 
another as the "best practices" way of handling day to day business for 
EVERYTHING BUT... E-mail.  Business deals big enough to affect thousands 
of people's lives get "inked" via an un-encrypted, un-authenticated 
e-mail every day.

Ridiculous.

Nate