On Apr 5, 2005 9:47 AM, Scot L. Harris <webid@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > As far as the telephone solicitors, the national do not call registry > works wonders. :) Yes it does! As does a service called Privacy Manager, which is offered by some phone companies. But since we are relating spam to telemarketers, lets look at another challenge/response system... I have a small sign next to my doorbell on the front of my house that says "No Solicitors". Quite often I see people walking down the street, going door to door. They get to my house, walk up to the front door, and (MOST of the time) they turn around and walk away. When I invite friends to come over to my house, they walk up to my door, and ring the doorbell. How does this work? It is simple challenge/response. (My friends don't come over to the house, see the sign and then leave) If a person sends me an e-mail, and assuming it has gotten through all the other RBL, Postfix sanity checks, Spamassassin, etc... and they get an e-mail back from me explaining that I don't recognize their address, and that I do not want them to contact me if they are sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, and I give them a link to click on to release their message (not all C/R systems require the need to send e-mail back and forth to confirm)... IF the spammer used a real address, and IF they got my challenge, and IF they responded, then they would get through (and then get some very nasty spam from me). But the few people who send me mail from unknown addresses don't mind at all that I have taken steps to reduce my incoming spam. I suppose a lot of it has to do with how you challenge them. Some systems which are run on a domain-wide level don't let the user have any control over the message that goes back to the sender. In my case, I chose to word the message in a way that none of my friends or associates mind at all. And the fact that they can accept the challenge by simply clicking a link instead of having to reply to the message makes it only that much easier. Now back to our point. And why are we still talking about this? LOL... The Peter Whalley issue is that he subscribed to a service from his ISP that uses C/R and he doesn't know what it does, or how to use it. Is that a hassle for people like us? Certainly... but should we come down on ALL people use use C/R systems just because Peter Whalley doesn't know how to use his? No. -- David Registered Linux User 383030 (since everyone else was doing it 8-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There are only 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.
