Now, once 100K zombies can send *only* 1000 spam messages a day instead of 10K or even 500K, it makes a difference, but it is no solution.
I'd like to see rate limits set much lower than that. Perhaps one message per day to begin with. After the message is sent, send the customer a reminder about the limit and tell them how to get to a web page to increase the limit. The web page would only accept an incremental increase. For instance, if your limit is one, you can bump it up to five per day and that is all. Then, if you exceed the new limit, you once again have the opportunity to bump it up by five more. Most people won't need more than 10 or 15 per day limits. People who need more can call their customer representative and order the volume mail add-on product. They will have to agree to a contract that allows you, the operator, to completely block their net access without notice if it appears that a bot/virus may have infected their systems. I'm sure if you discuss this kind of stuff with your product development and product marketing people, they will come up with more interesting variations. One message per day is not too low. There are people who never use email. They just browse the web and use IM. Why should you, the operator, allow those customers to inject huge numbers of email systems into the Internet as botnet drones? 1000 a day is way too high, IMHO. --Michael Dillon