On 03-May-05 Simon Hobson wrote:
[...] The flip side of this is that the ISP needs to provide a mechanism for customers with needs like the OP to be transferred to a different user group where the outgoing mail restrictions are lifted. Since this would have to be on application, and presumably after correspondence with the customer, it would exclude the automated spamming systems, and it would also allow some checks (such as "Do you know how to secure your machine against open relaying ?").
If every ISP did this sort of thing, then spam would be reduced, and the life of spammers would be made harder as there would be far less compromisable machines for them to use.
Time to wake up, it's a dream and it aint going to happen :-(
Simon
Dream or not, with this arrangement the ISP would then control the subscriber's usage. So if the subscriber used their "user group" to send spam, that subscriber could be summarily struck out, without refund. Though such a person could re-subscribe by setting up a new account with the ISP under a different name etc., the sheer inconvenience and expense of doing so would surely have a strongly limiting effect on spam.
Ted.
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