spam issues

[ronnie gauthier]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:57:47 -0400 - Matthew Carpenter <matt at eisgr.com> wrote
the following
Re: Re: spam issues

I agree with you in theory but all RBL's are not equal. But what I've seen is
that once on one its a bitch to get unlisted. They also get legitimate web sites
in the same block as the spammer.
We got RBL'd once. It was a nightmare. Ya, it was our fault, we were open for a
bit but the result was that even after the block was lifted we were still
blocked at many domains and had to contact them individualy. I remember it took
forever to get IBM to unblock us. That is a lesson not forgotten. That is why I
chose to block by domain.


>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.
>