djc@??? (Dave C.) [Friday, August 09, 2002 8:48 AM]:
>
> Yes, it is an after the fact measure. But if your AUP has terms like
> 'agree to pay up to $100 per message for violations', and if you make
> it clear you terminate accounts at the first offense......
>
Yup. Nice to enforce if you have a credit card number or something in hand.
With freemail providers (like us) things get a little tougher than that :)
> Not if the spammer was sending to, say a thousand different domains,
> with a hundred addresses in each domain.
Spammers are normally stupid and lazy - they'll take the shortest route
possible
> If they sent a sperate message, each one one recipient in each domain,
> for a total of a thousand recipients, and a hundred messages...
Not worth the time or trouble. Hell, most of them barely make enough for
KFC and cheap beer - and the next week's rent on the trailer park.
The others (real professional spammers) - they want to push out as much mail
as possible fast. No time wasted doing fancy randomizing.
> Now, perhaps a maximum number of recipients per message would at least
> slow them down...
That'll anyway be there. Now have them set up something like qmail with the
concurrency patch, to pound your server with an endless paralell sequence of
MAIL FROM: RCPT TO: ... (or worse, LSMTP, the ListServ MTA...).
-srs