On (15 Jul 02) mark lewis wrote to Frank Vest...

Hello mark,

FV>> "spam bots" could be made to "harvest" Node
addresses for spam
FV>> purposes. In reality, harvesting would not be needed. Just grab a
FV>> copy of the Nodelist, add yourself into it and spam away. :(
 ml>  MM>> It is happening already. I throw away hundreds of Fidonet-
 ml>  MM>> addressed spam daily at my Internet gateway.

 FV> True, but those originate from the Internet. As I described,
 FV> the spam would originate from a Fidonet Node in the Fidonet
 FV> Nodelist operating Fidonet mailer and no way to stop them
 FV> since they added their own Nodes listing to the Fidonet
 FV> Nodelist. Yes, the *C could remove the listing, but the Node
 FV> just adds it back in.... and the battle rages.

 ml> there would be a lock mechanism... has to be... and the "controlling
 ml> commitee" (if you will) would have that capability...

In the Internet world, the control is in large part by the ISP and you
pay the ISP for access. Fidonet has no such thing... therefore, there
would be no controlling committee except the *Cs and they would have
little power with a Nodelist that is open to addition by anyone. My
biggest fear for Fidonet is that it will be opened up to the point
that anyone can just add themselves into Fidonet without any questions
asked.

If Fidonet is not careful, it could become a place that is little
different from the Internet is regards to spam. Much like the
spammers, a person could jump from Node number to Node number. Having
the ability for "anyone off the street" to add themselves into the
Fidonet nodelist is not a good thing for Fidonet.


Anyway, this is getting off the topic of a Nodelist format. :-)


Regards,

 Frank

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/flv
http://biseonline.com/r19

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