[ale] OT: Stopping spam (was: no subject)

[Fulton Green]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 02:38:12PM -0400, Jonathan Rickman wrote:
> 
> > If all ISPs blocked port 25 outbound on all non-business 
> > accounts, how much spam would be blocked?
> 
> A good bit, but there would be a baby laying out there in that puddle of
> bathwater.

Actually, a good chunk of spam would be blocked, given the 100+ filters
I've had to add for my *incoming* mail.  'course, I'd give the hackers two
weeks before their next virus payload combined the current SMTP client
capability with a POP3 or IMAP password sniffer so as to reroute the
traffic to the ISP's designated outbound relay.  Then we're looking at
greater enforcement of encrypted-password-type solutions instead of the
cleartext password transmissions incumbent in the legacy mail retrieval
protocols that are still being used today.