Comments on: Technology solution to slicing spam lags

A coalition aiming to erase junk e-mail unites behind the law but stumbles over technology.

[Steve Jordan]

I'm already using a better solution to SPAM.

Let the ISPs knock themselves out trying to out-hack the hackers, there's an easier solution that we can all practice right now. Simply, be familiar and specific in your subject and reply lines, and tell others who e-mail you to do the same.
Spammers have the hardest time faking specific e-mail subjects... all of their titles are very generic, like "Re: Your File." So don't be generic! Say something like "The Davidson Case file," that the recipient will instantly recognize as a viable subject. Or use a familiar personal or company name or nickname, that a spammer can't guess, but your recipient will recognize. And tell your friends that "Hi" in the subject line is no longer acceptable! Try "Hi from Craig B," or "Petey says hi," instead.
A familiar e-mail name and a specific and/or familiar subject line will take the guesswork out of 90% or more of e-mail. If we all start doing this, spam will be obvious the moment it shows up in your mailbox, and more easily removed or filtered out. I've already added a line to this effect on the bottom of my e-mails, to spread the word around.

Quick solution that work until a perm. fix is created

I use to open my inbox and have 300 - 400 junk email in one night. I have had this email address for 7 years. The first 4 years, I received little junk mail then one day it just exploded. 100 a day, 200 a day and so on. Then I found this

http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/

I still get junk mail but I never see it Because it is moved to a folder in Outlook that I never have to look in. Some Junk email still gets through the filter, but it is next to nothing maybe 5 - 8 a day. That is incredible compared to 300 or more. This program is A++++. Been using it for 7 months with no complaints.

[bjbrock]

Nothing new is needed.

We have become slack in enforcing standards like Name resolution. Instead of easing up on the rules so sloppy IT implementations get away with less than proper configuration, tighten up the slack and force companies to learn to set up IT the way it was designed. Case in point: MX records are becoming less and less used and only an A record is querried for a mail server's host name. And soetimes not even that when receiving mail. Using the Helo command, a mail server will respond with it's FQDN which can be verified against the DNS entry for the MX record which also shows the IP address which the MX record resolves to. Verifying that the sender's domain portion of his E-mail address is the same domain which the IP address of the sending SMTP serve, as resolved by the MX and PTR records using a DNS querry, will stop nearly all E-mail with a bogus sender's E-mail address. We are looking for some Magic Bullet when all that is needed is to follow the rules and standards which we already have.

The founders of the Internet and WWW new what they were doing and did it right. If users would simply obtain proper education for administering their IT, and we would stop letting those who haven't or won't obtain the knowledge needed to implement the rules and procedures we already have from getting by with sloppy work and poorly configured and maintained IT implementations, most of our problems would go away. Internet user have got to take responsibility or no amount of new technology is going to help. Nobody is looking at the user as apossible solution. The user has created the problems, then has to live with the mess. Why not let the user fix the same problems he caused through acting when unqualified to act. WHY DO WE REFUSE THIS APPROACH, when it is the only valid solution?