spam issues

[Tim Wunder]

Fine. But end users won't care, or simply don't understand. I got calls 
from irate users, people trying to send my company e-mail, demanding to 
know why I was blocking their mail.
1. It wasn't *me* blocking it.
2. They couldn't care in the least why they were blocked.
3. Half of those who *would* care, are clueess as to how to get it fixed.

Fine, identify open relays and have them fixed, obviously tag mail as 
spam, but don't *block* the mail from its intended recipient.

Besides, SA *does* use RBL's to determine whether somethiing gets tagged 
as spam, in addition to the logic regarding the number of "Free" and 
"XXX" in the email (IIRC)...

On 7/30/2003 2:57 PM, someone claiming to be Matthew Carpenter wrote:

> RBL's are still better than SA or other filters...
> 
> Why?  Because properly selected RBL's (ie. Deterministic, easy to get off of)
> actually allow you to block based on a PROBLEM!  RBL's that you want to use
> are Open Relay black lists and Dialup server blacklists.  These are PROBLEMS
> to be FIXED.  They aren't attempting to look for the appropriate number of
> "Free" and "XXX" in the email, which could be used in real life email.
> 
> I have been blocked before.  I used to administer a GroupWise system that was
> difficult to lock down.  This was before I learned about RBL's.  They
> rightfully flagged my server as an Open Relay (anyone can send email to
> anywhere/anyone) and when I checked the server, we had a HUGE backlog of
> emails which the spammers had sent to anyone and everyone.  We got the server
> configured correctly and then got off the RBL.  It was inconvenient, but RBL's
> are a real part of a good strategy against SPAM, and will be around for as
> long as SPAM is around.  And this is why.
> 
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:09:31 -0400
> Tim Wunder <tim at thewunders.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>When our ISP blocked mail intended for my company (we're a small 
>>company, don't want to administer a mail server locally) based on RBL's, 
>>I pitched a major fit with them. We're a business, we don't want ANY 
>>mail blocked. They were pretty good at determining what to block, about 
>>95% right, but it was the 5% of legitimate mails that they blocked that 
>>caused considerable problems.
>>They now use SpamAssassin and spam gets marked, but delivered. Much 
>>better for our end users. Some legit mail gets a SAPM tag, and some spam 
>>goes un-tagged, but it's much more managable for our users. (FWIW)
> 
> 
>