Re: Worsening google service reputation and abuse

[Suresh Ramasubramanian via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

The past decades are full of technical solutions to try and put the costs on the spammers without imposing too much 
cost on oneself while implementing it - with one such tech after the other falling by the wayside with monotonous 
regularity.

About the only viable way to put the cost on the spammer is to get him turfed off whatever provider he’s hosted on so 
he has to pay for new servers before he can start again.

But even that costs him far less than what he stands to gain from a spam campaign, and is infinitesimal compared to 
what he gains from a phishing or scam campaign.  And getting spammers to stay off a provider’s servers once terminated 
seems nearly impossible for at least some providers that have a revolving door for one spam campaign after the other.


--srs
________________________________
From: Barry Shein via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2025 10:22:39 AM
To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog () lists nanog org>
Cc: bzs () theworld com <bzs () theworld com>; Marc Binderberger <marc+lists () sniff es>; John R. Levine <johnl () 
iecc com>
Subject: Re: Worsening google service reputation and abuse


On August 16, 2025 at 19:09 nanog () lists nanog org (John R. Levine via NANOG) wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Aug 2025, bzs () theworld com wrote:
> > "Electronic postage stamps" are one possible approach and might become
> > the general term for whatever resource management is adopted.
> >
> > But as a phrase it's too limiting and evokes certain counter-arguments
> > as people stand up straw men and knock them down just based on those
> > three words.

I don't understand, I say "electronic postage stamps" are probably not
the right approach tho whatever happens someone might call it that and
you want to argue that...electronic postage stamps are probably not
the right approach? I just said that.

All I've said thus far is that spammers' business models seem fragile
and brittle and to rely on sending around a billion messages per day
per each and perhaps it would be better to disrupt that business model
than to engineer yet another filtering / validation technology.

I haven't proposed a specific solution even if you keep wanting to
read that into my words.

At this point all I'm proposing is a paradigm shift, that we need to
think differently about the problem.

> It's a great idea if you wave away all of the practical questions like
> who's going to issue the postage, who's going to collect it, who's going
> to pay for the infrastructure to do the checking, and who's going to
> settle the claims when a crook breaks into your ISP and sends $10,000
> worth of spam using your stamps.
>
> My preferred solution is a mandatory button in each e-mail message that
> administers a small electric shock to the sender.  Each individual shock
> would be no big deal but when thousands of people hit the button the
> cumulative effect would be painful or for big time spammers, fatal.  It's
> sort of like the old Bonded Sender idea but with electricity.  I have no
> idea how to implement that either, but people who claim it can't work
> are just opposed to creative, innovative ideas.
>
> R's,
> John
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