[ale] Earthlink Spam protection

[Joseph Knapka]

Thomas Holmquist <fishy at ipa.net> writes:

> HAH
> 
> tell me your kidding right...?
> 
> I have both Mindspring DSL and Bellsouth DSL.
> 
> I prefer my Bellsouth, its much more stable (I was connected for 55
> days straight.) Until I had to move my router :(
> 
> Also Mindspring DNS goes down ~ 1 day per month.
> 
> Plus I think Its a stupid solution against spam... what keeps the
> spambot from just replying to your "spam" protection?

Generally, the fact that the return addresses on spam are forged,
so the spammer normally won't even get the challenge message.

> Also say I were to send this email, then Leave my computer, and not
> return until tomarrow morning, it wouldent arive until I reply to the
> stupid anti-spam thingie.

Yep. Anyone who enables challenges has got to be prepared for
such an eventuality. Remember that you only have to confirm
once to send to any particular recipient -- just like you
had to confirm just once to subscribe to ALE. It doesn't
seem like a hardship to me.

I do, however, see one giant hole in the chellenge/reply scheme:

Let's say you and I are both using challenges, and we've never sent
one another emails before. I send you an email, you send me a
challenge - but I don't get it, because you're not in my whitelist. I
send you a challenge, which you don't get because *I'm* not in *your*
whitelist. The prospect of mail challenge loops looms. The obvious
solution is to allow all challenges through, but then spammers will
just disguise their messages as challenges, and we're back to
square one :-(

-- Joe
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