// Althrought I'd like it to be different, blacklists are quite effective // blocking spam. It's the best solution as long as we continue using SMTP.
This entirely depends how you prioritize things. If "best" and "effective" are measured on what percentage of spam emails get blocked, yes, services like spamhaus can be very effective, possibly the most effective (short of drastic things like turning off smtp). The problem in the real world is that "best" and "effective" also have to incorporate a measure of legitimate emails blocked; in those metrics, spamhaus does fairly poorly. It's the same problem with all the net's vigilante groups: as Charles said, there's no good way to contest or correct the data (nor, in many cases, to find out what got you listed). Things like SPF don't catch as much spam (yet; it'll improve as the acceptance improves), but have a very attractive false hit rate. // In the end I ended up using my ISP's SMTP server as 'smarthost' // to send mail. This is what I'm doing now, since many of these folks assume that everyone on the end of a DSL or cable line are spammers, and many provide no way for me to tell them I'm not. It sucks; my ISPs mail server is okay, but certainly not 100% reliable, and adds another hop I'd rather not worry about. Anthony
