Blocking Unsolicited Advertising Email

Purpose of an Email Blocklist

From a discussion in news.admin.net-abuse.email between Patricia Schaffer, brad.madison, and trebor:

Blocking Spam vs. Modifying Behavior

I might also ask when it was that the purpose of blocklists shifted from blocking spam to modifying behavior. Did this happen?

It was always ever so, implicitly if not explicitly. Spam is a social problem, after all. It's not enough to outfit the citizenry with bullet-proof jackets; you also have to make the shooters stop shooting.

Social Goals Not Posted

"Implicitly" seems so much like "the lurkers support me in email." The social purpose was never announced, never discussed, but nonetheless it was there, right? All I recall seeing in summaries and comparisons of blocklist usage was counts of blocked messages. Nary a peep about social goals or social victories. I also do not recall ever seeing that MAPS or ORBS or any other blocklist included non-spam-source IPs on the list on purpose to further social goals. I do recall some saying that inclusion of a supposed non-spamming IP on ORBS by Alan Brown was a great sin commmited by him.

Before MAPS, for *years*, the Spam Wars were about tracking spammers and educating them and their providers as to why spam was unacceptible. The idea was to explain how the system worked, how spam ruins it. MAPS evolved out of the principle of education as a corrective for the social problem. Jim Nitchals exemplified the educational ideal.

But it became clear that once the educable were educated, there remained a core of spammers who refused to follow the rules of the Internet, who knew full well that spam was unsociable behavior, but who insisted on doing what they wanted anyway. MAPS failed to deal with these vermin; other blocklists evolved to do what MAPS could not or would not do.

Previous Lists Did Not Pressure The ISP

MAPS certainly did appear to try very hard on the social level, but I don't recall anything that ever said MAPS listed IPs to pressure the ISP. Blocklists were never the only tool used by anti-spammers; social goals were pursued by other means. Sorry, I am unconvinced that the goal was always there, that there was no shift.

The goal to educate the educable was mostly reached long ago; education is still going on especially for clubies, but ... the present goal is to defend against those hard-core spammers who *will* not comply with the rules of the Internet. The plain fact is that the spammers pay big fees to spam-supporting ISPs; the ISPs know that spam is against the rules of the Internet, but they refuse to kick the spammers out.

Blocklists Considered Self Defense

Blocklists are part of the private sector's attempts to mitigate losses due to theft by spamming. Blocklists should expand to whatever point it takes to force the recalcitrant ISPs to play by the rules. There is no reason in the world why ISPs can't cut off their spam-support services right now. Spam must stop. If the ISPs won't stop it, then those ISPs will be cut off from the honest folks. If "innocents" are hurt, then it behooves those innocents to defend themselves against the root cause of their pain ... not SPEWS or any of the other blocklists, but their own spam-supportive ISP and its pet spammers.