Re: [Exim] TMDA

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Author: Mike Meredith
Date:  
To: Sherwood Botsford, exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] TMDA
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On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 16:16:33 -0700, Sherwood Botsford wrote:
> What are people's thoughts on TMDA (www.tmda.net)


A significant number of anti-spam people *hate* challenge-response
systems. I haven't looked at TMDA to see if it overcomes the problems
(and I don't believe it's possible).

C-R systems end up inflicting a DDoS on innocent victims :-

* Spammer decides to send out a spam with my email address on
(mike.meredith@???)

* 25,000 victims send me a challenge.

* At best, I've got a hell of a lot of email to plow through. That's
without considering quota limits (and possibly loosing proper email),
server problems caused by additional load (not everyone's server will
expect 25,000 emails in a day), etc.

Inflicting pain on spammers sounds good, but inflicting pain on innocent
victims just to protect your users from a lesser pain isn't the sort of
thing that I'm willing to do.

--
Mike Meredith, Senior Informatics Officer
University of Portsmouth: Hostmaster, Postmaster and Security
  So I think I'm becoming a geek vampire. Damn. Hate when that happens.
                       -- Davezilla
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