<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="images/slowsign.gif"> <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="all.css"> <title>Slowlists Spam Elimination</title> </head> <body> <div align="center"> <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="3" class="main" width="100%"> <tr> <td colspan="2"align="left" class="banner" height="75" valign="top"> <table align="center" width="100%"> <tr> <td align="left"> <a href="http://www.bcx.com/"><img border="0" src="images/slowtitle.jpg" alt="logo"></a> </td> <td align="right"> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="140" valign="top"class="bg"> <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" width="150"> <tr> <td align="left"> <img border="0" src="images/slowlarge.jpg" alt="slow sign" width="140" vspace="5"> <p> <h3><font color="#0033CC">Site Navigation</font></h3> <menu> <a href="index.html">Home</a><br> <a href="buildmilter.html">Build</a><br> <a href="patch.html">Patch</a><br> <a href="configure.html">Edit slow.conf</a><br> <a href="boot.html">Boot-time</a><br> <a href="mxserver.html">MX Servers</a><br> <a href="lookup.html">Lookups</a><br> </menu> </td> </tr> </table> </center> </div> </td> <td width="80%" align="left" valign="top" class="bg"> <p> Spam relies on volume. <b>Slowlists</b> thwrart that. If you throttle spam you can kill it, because spam's only selling point is high volume at high speed. The goal of slowlists is the complete elimination of spam from irresponsible ISPs by reducing it to an unprofitable level. It does not directly address spam orginating from rogue users of otherwise good ISPs. </p><p> Slowlists restrict a sender's volume of email by delaying the receiver's response according to the reputation of (the IP address of) the sender. Senders in good grace move email without penalty; unknown senders are slowed, to provide a window to verify their volume; probable spammers are asked to retry later, to show their pennance. This last delay can be calibrated to squelch even the huge number of open proxies. No email is ever rejected: only the patience of the sender is tried. </p><p> A sender's good reputation is shared with other good senders, to create a society of legitimate email movers. To be effective, a <b>slowlists society</b> should be large and communicate as if they were a single receiver, to throttle volume to <i>any</i> part of the society. Outsiders can still send mail -- slowly -- and over time gain the legitimacy they deserve. </p><p> Slowlists also use delay to distinguish legitimate senders from spammers. Legitimate senders will cope with the initial delay until their reputation earns them faster handling. For a spammer who rushes the delay provides time for their tarnished reputation to spread. </p><p> There are many definitions of spam, but we stand by this one: a volume of email sent in excess of the sender's good reputation. Slowlists attack spam at this very definition: limit the volume of email received from unknown senders or senders in disrepute. <br> <br> <i><small> © 2003 Bryan Costales and Perforce, Inc. All rights reserved.<br> </small></i> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html>
# | Change | User | Description | Committed | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
#4 | 4052 | bryan_costales |
Implimented: whitelisting AddMXHost for MX servers that lie Converted to thread safe DNS routines garbage collection RunAsUser and RunAsGroup for root startups rebuild the database summarize by IP number Finished all documentation. Moved release from alpha to beta |
||
#3 | 4030 | bryan_costales |
Finished documenting the configuration file Fixed a race condition and a core dump bug. Added hooks for whitelisting and IP aliasing Added support for Berkeley DB 4.2 Converted to htonl() and ntohl() Known Bugs: ip.db cannot be shared over NFS IP tracking from MX hosts can fail A RunAsUser config option is needed. |
||
#2 | 3998 | bryan_costales |
Brought the whole distribution up to V0.9 Added a huge abount of documentation. Added slowedit find Created startup scripts to launch for testing Fixed numerous bugs. Fixed a few portablity issues. Installed hooks for whitelisting and IP aliases. |
||
#1 | 3890 | bryan_costales |
This is the 0.6 release. The following have been added with the uses indicated: Source files: edit.c -- the slowedit functions compat.c -- missing system files Autoconf: configure.ac, makefile.am config.h aclocal.m4 acinclude.m4 build/ Documents: doc/ -- html and man(1) documents Testing: tests/ -- regressive testing TODO: -- revised to show actual progress |