To email or not to email...

Without opening up the can-o-works of what is spam and what is abuse, I
think "it" happens a lot and with zombies running about, happen from
everywhere. My concern is that those reporting abuse are also themselves,
being abusers - at least it will happen in some cases. This leads to the
problem that if you're blocking mail from abusers, you're not going to
receive abuse reports from them via email. Consequently, there seems to be
need for a different protocol or a different abuse reporting address in DNS
for the domain.

 

I appreciate the value of using email to report email abuse, so perhaps we
need to think about a DNS text record for the address to report to, since it
might be a different domain or port than the source of the abuse. The mail
should also be signed in some way to ensure it comes from the domain
claiming to be reporting the abuse.

 

To add fuel to the fire, I define abuse as any behavior that violates the
TOS that a CPS or ISP imposes on messages sent to their users. This can
include phishing, viruses, bulk mailings sent over a short period of time,
etc. By its nature it is broad and subject to unique definitions on a per
mail sub-system basis. Consequently, in addition to reporting abuse, we may
want to have a means of reporting what the abuse conditions are for the mail
sub-system reporting the abuse.

 

Thoughts?