# Is it possible to rebuild the nature of email to stop spam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 14, 2009, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969 "2009-07-14T12:58:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/21 "2009-07-15T04:12:21Z")
The reason I asked this question may be because I am in a rare position these days, in that I don’t use online email, I use a local client, one that is now outdated and no longer updated: Eudora. It has a built in Bayesian spam filter that actually does a decent job, and catches 99% of my incoming spam quite successfully. But as I am currently getting around 50 spam emails per day, that means every couple of days it mistakes a genuine email for spam, or mistakes a spam for genuine, and I have to delve through the junk folder to make sure I don’t miss anything important. For some reason it is often assuming email from my sister is spam, despite it always being perfectly legitimate conversational text. Can’t find a way for it to learn that, without it causing more trouble than it solves. Anyway, my point is, I like my local client, but am probably more vulnerable to spam because of that choice, and so I was hoping maybe some kind of change might be on the horizon. In the meantime, I will continue to wish all spammers a long and painful illness before a messy and violent death. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/22 "2009-07-15T13:30:53Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I use a local client, one that is now outdated and no longer updated: Eudora. > > For some reason it is often assuming email from my sister is spam, despite it always being perfectly legitimate conversational text. Can’t find a way for it to learn that, without it causing more trouble than it solves. I have v 6.2, and you just go to the Junk folder and mark the message “not junk”, which adds the sender to your address list. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/23 "2009-07-15T14:25:57Z")
Public lynchings of a few spammers would lead to a drastic decrease in spam. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/24 "2009-07-15T14:39:15Z")
> [@ratatoskK](#): > > I have v 6.2, and you just go to the Junk folder and mark the message “not junk”, which adds the sender to your address list. She’s already on my address list, and always has been. The problem is, the setting of “Mail isn’t junk if sender is in address book” gets false positives with all the email that is spoofed with my own email address in the “from”, so I’ve switched that setting off. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/25 "2009-07-15T16:27:58Z")
Take your own address out of your addressbook. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/26 "2009-07-15T19:11:54Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > I know that some of you will find this offensive or galling, but my opinion is that you just haven’t put into play your spam filters. I get very little spam at my real addresses, and I almost don’t know the problem that sparks this thread. Yahoo Mail has learned almost all the people I don’t want to hear from, and I’ve unsubscribed from the companies that I don’t want to hear from again. I also use a dummy address for all the forum signups and so on that I don’t trust. > > What are you doing that is opening you to this torrent of spam? Keep blocking the addresses, and IME, the spam will stop. I was going to ask the same thing. I haven’t had a problem with spam for a couple of years now. My personal yahoo account maybe gets 1 spam message a month. My company’s e-mail account gets pretty much -zero- spam. I didn’t know people were still having problems. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/27 "2009-07-15T19:36:35Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > I was going to ask the same thing. I haven’t had a problem with spam for a couple of years now. My personal yahoo account maybe gets 1 spam message a month. My company’s e-mail account gets pretty much -zero- spam. > I didn’t know people were still having problems. They shut down a major spammer six months ago or so, and I noted a large drop since then. Almost nothing slips through the Yahoo spam filter. Nonetheless, a very large amount of email being sent is spam, and that increases costs and decreases performance for everyone, even if many people no longer see it. Clearly enough do, and fall for it, to make the very small cost of spamming worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/28 "2009-07-15T19:39:33Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Of course, there are some serious problems with this idea: > > [ol] > [li] It requires that financial information be tied to an email address. There goes all the freedom and flexibility of email.[/li][li] Large but perfectly legitimate mailing lists could become extremely expensive. If a hundred thousand people sign up for your weekly newsletter, but on average only half of them open it each week, it costs you $5,000 a week to maintain it.[/li][/ol] There are a couple of other problems also. First, it forces a lot of traffic to be sent the other way to do the confirmation. That might be more bandwidth than spam is taking up. Second, it will encourage content free titles, to get people to open the mail to see what is going on. I’m on a lot of newsletters, and it is useful that they put the top stories in the title, so I can see if the mail is worth looking at. I’ve never heard of this idea myself. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/29 "2009-07-15T19:42:15Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > x2. > > As someone that has worked in PR and Corp Comms, you need to be very careful how you define “spam”. Is it the press release that I send to 50 reporters and 100 analysts? What about very legitimate mail-outs - like the 300 emails I send to marketing managers to inform of sponsorship opportunities? > > What about the opt in, 3000 pax mailing list - is that spam? > > And yes, even if it is a mass mailing, some unsolicited offers I do want to know about. Like the database purchase offer I received yesterday. There are a couple of characteristics of spam. First, it gets sent to everyone for whom the spammer has an email address. Your mail to marketing managers clearly isn’t. Second, it can’t be turned off. I’m involved with a conference that mass mails also, but we give directions about how to get off our list in each mailing, and we remove people who say they want to be removed. I assume your mass mails are similar. That obviously doesn’t work for a real spammer. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/30 "2009-07-15T21:17:02Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > As someone that has worked in PR and Corp Comms, you need to be very careful how you define “spam”. Spam: unsolicited and unwanted email. That covers it completely. Spam is defined by the one who receives it. If I sign up for your mailing list, it’s not spam _to me_ because it fails the “unsolicited” test. If I’m one of those people who is looking for cheap Viagra, then the Viagra come-ons are not spam _to me_ because they fail the “unwanted” test. This definition means that spam is not defined at the sender’s end. If you send a million Viagra come-ons, and 10 recipients want it and the rest don’t, then you’ve sent 999,990 spams, and ten non-spams. If, legally, we used that definition of spam, then in the above example you would be a spammer. Sending those ten non-spams is fine and legal, but you sent 999,990 spams, so you’re a spammer. If I sign up for your email newsletter, then I opt out, and you keep sending me email, you’re a spammer. After I opt out, your email is now unsolicited and unwanted, so you’re spamming me by sending it. Doesn’t matter that you also sent 999,999 emails that were wanted. Once you recieve my opt-out, it’s your obligation to remove me from the mailing list, and until you do, you’re a spammer. Oh, and as for the OP, I agree with those who say that authenticated email headers would go a long, long way toward solving the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/31 "2009-07-15T22:07:16Z")
All those botnets would be shut down if their ISPs blocked the SMTP port (25). ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/32 "2009-07-16T01:22:43Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > Take your own address out of your addressbook. My address isn’t in my address book, it’s in my Profile, which is unavoidable. ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/33 "2009-07-16T02:18:36Z")
The thing is, there is already a recognized way to verify the IP address that email comes from. It called Sender Policy Framework, or SPF ( see [www.openspf.org](http://www.openspf.org) ). It lets you add records to the DNS listing for your domain that identifies valid IPs which originate emails for your domain. If all mail servers set up SPF records, and all mail servers filtered any email where the stated domain does not match the IP address it was received from, all of the spambots would be out of business. And it’s been a recognized standard for several years. Every mail server program I’m aware of supports SPF filtering in some way. I don’t know why it’s not more widely implemented. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/34 "2009-07-16T07:07:19Z")
> [@RJKUgly](#): > > And it’s been a recognized standard for several years. Every mail server program I’m aware of supports SPF filtering in some way. I don’t know why it’s not more widely implemented. It would completely bugger people like me: I have my own domain, which is simply a catch-all forward to my ISP, so I can change ISPs without changing email addresses. But all my email is sent from my ISP, with a from address of my domain. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/35 "2009-07-16T10:06:52Z")
> [@HorseloverFat](#): > > That said, spam really isnt such a big issue anymore because of blacklists and content scanning. The mail that you actually see in your inbox is a small fraction of the mail addressed to you. The spam you see in your spam box is a small percentage of the spam addressed to you too, its just the spam most likely to be real email. Just because users don’t see the spam does not mean that it is not a problem. All internet users pay for the 90% of email traffic that is spam, via bandwidth charges, storage and maintaining antispam filters/servers. Getting rid of that traffic would give us all a better, faster and more reliable internet. [QUOTE=Quartz] All those botnets would be shut down if their ISPs blocked the SMTP port (25). [/QUOTE] Oh yes. **\** [QUOTE=Quartz] It would completely bugger people like me: I have my own domain, which is simply a catch-all forward to my ISP, so I can change ISPs without changing email addresses. But all my email is sent from my ISP, with a from address of my domain. [/QUOTE] But you probably don’t change ISPs very often, and when you do, you just update the SPF record. However, you could also forward your outgoing email via a known host - I use the Outbound Mailhop service from [DynDNS.org](http://DynDNS.org) (even though I now have a static IP address) at £25 a year for 150 emails a day (which is fine until my wife sends out her quarterly email to all our friends, which probably does count as spam). This almost completely avoids blacklisting and port blocking and is a secure system. You could also possibly use SecureSMTP for outgoing email on your inbound mail system - check with your domain host. There is always a secure technical solution, and if people understood and used those systems, spam issues caused by non-secure _but-I-want-to-do-this-easily_ approaches could be severely reduced. Si (fighting spam and open mail relays since 1993) ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/36 "2009-07-16T23:43:02Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > It would completely bugger people like me: I have my own domain, which is simply a catch-all forward to my ISP, so I can change ISPs without changing email addresses. But all my email is sent from my ISP, with a from address of my domain. No, you’d be fine. If you change ISPs, you just update the DNS record for your domain and change the valid IP address the one(s) your ISP sends mail from. Takes just a few minutes and you’re back in business. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/37 "2009-07-17T06:23:06Z")
:rolleyes::rolleyes: I know but humor me… Please :smack: ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/38 "2009-07-18T20:43:49Z")
> [@GusNSpot](#): > > How much faster would the average net speed be if spam were to be stopped as of today? I don’t have any real answer, just a small data point. And I think it says the average speed wouldn’t be all that much different. On the servers I’m responsible for\* email is a small part of the bandwidth used, less then 5% of the total. That figure comes from my memory when I analyzed usage a couple years ago so I could be off a smidge, but I don’t think it’s much. Also, a year or so ago I opted into a spam filtering service (Barracuda) offered by our ISP, which cut the spam actually received by our mail servers by about 99%\*\*. As far as I can tell looking at bandwidth logs from my CoLo, our usage didn’t change by any noticeable amount. So my (extremely limited) experience is that while email is by far the largest number of hits on my servers, those hits are almost all very small in size compared to the total usage, which is basically email, FTP, and websites. - Three boxes running email servers for a half dozen companies, but totaling only 150 or so users, plus three more boxes running several websites, but only one of any size. \*\* Barracuda is amazingly effective. Only a handful of lost legitimate emails (and those were due to user error) and an incredible reduction in spam. My personal spam went from about 300 per day to two or three per day. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/39 "2009-07-18T21:03:50Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There are a couple of other problems also. First, it forces a lot of traffic to be sent the other way to do the confirmation. That might be more bandwidth than spam is taking up. I work for a company that produces deep packet inspection equipment for ISPs. Our boxes look at every single packet that traverses the ISP’s network and classifies it as HTTP(web), Peer to Peer, email, etc. The amount of bandwidth that is taken up by all email(spam or otherwise) is minuscule. ---
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969/40 "2009-07-18T23:05:31Z")
> [@Rysto](#): > > I work for a company that produces deep packet inspection equipment for ISPs. Our boxes look at every single packet that traverses the ISP’s network and classifies it as HTTP(web), Peer to Peer, email, etc. The amount of bandwidth that is taken up by all email(spam or otherwise) is minuscule. Good to know, that seems to back up what I see in my little piece of the internet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-rebuild-the-nature-of-email-to-stop-spam/502969.md?page=1)