Re: Email Web of Trust

Jeff Silverman wrote:
>    "Web of reputation is a secure and reliable technical means of 
> assessing the reputation of an MTA with respect to the probability that 
> a given E-mail message from that MTA is SPAM.  Web of reputation relies 
> solely on the IP address of the remote MTA (as determined from the 
> TCP/IP system, not from the HELO header of SMTP)  to identify the source"
> 

Its really an estimate and might not be particulary reliable or secure. 
I think the key point is that we are estimating the trust or reputation 
value of a given MTA (no need to restrict it to IP or domain names). 
Also, take a look at Alan's definition which IMHO seems to avoid these 
problems.

>    I am struggling with explicitly mentioning that web of reputation 
> does *not* involve examining the contents of the message.  I finally 
> took it out of my proposed problem statement, but I still have 
> reservations about that, and if somebody wants to argue that point, I 
> will listen.
> 

The values received from the web of trust will be used in the filtering 
process which can very well make decisions on the message itself. Plus 
some of the metrics reflect results examination of actual messages.

Yakov