Re: Email Web of Trust - Problem Statement

Mark Baugher wrote:

> At 01:36 PM 3/8/2004, Alan DeKok wrote:
> 
>> Mark Baugher <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > The question that pops into my head when reading the problem 
>> statement is
>> > "trusted to do what or to not do what?"
>>
>>   The problem in question is spam, so the trust in question should be
>> related to spam.
>>
>>   e.g. "I believe that 75% of the messages from domain FOO are spam".
>>
>>   Taken over multiple intermediary hops, these numbers give you some
>> probability that any one message is a priori going to be spam.  It's
>> not perfect, but it's a start.
> 
> 
> Yes, but it begs the question of what is spam.  One needs a very clear 
> definition of what is spam in order to trust that some domain does or 
> does not originate spam.  And there could be more than one metric such 
> as originating UBE promotions versus nefarious scams to bilk people out 
> of their savings.
> 
> More generally, the trust could be based on a particular policy or set 
> of policies:  A particular domain, for example, might be trusted to 
> adhere to certain antispam policies regarding UBE, authenticating 
> senders, responding to complaints, etc.
> 
> I think we need to resolve this question before discussing mechanisms.
> 

I was actually thinking of whether a specific domain is trusted to 
provide non-forged data in SMTP, staying away from the definitions of spam.

Yakov