X-Mail-Filters-Spam : Spam [ID=-1]
Precedence: bulk
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]

Hi Martin:

Don't get your hopes up. IMail is a great "application" (e.g., their
back-end), but on the systems end (dealing with the SMTP protocol), they've
never been able to catch up with real-life demands. It's possible that they
just don't have any strong talent in that area.

Most of their anti-spam implementation is of little value, because it forces
us to first ACCEPT a mail and THEN (if we were to follow RFCs) notify
apparent senders of our non-delivery. That was fine 10 or 15 years ago, when
this was once conceived. But given the realities of 2007 (and the several
prior years), 99% of the apparent senders are non-existing accounts or
joe-jobs who would end up being spammed by us. If we simply "delete"
messages, then you run the risk of deleting or blocking legitimate messages
WITHOUT giving the sender (and the recipient) the required (and absolutely
necessary) notification that "something's wrong with your message".

The obvious solution has always been to REFUSE the acceptance of mail as
early as possible - meaning, during the actual SMTP connection. If one
chooses to block mail based on failed SPF, missing RevDNS (whether you agree
with that or not), faked HELO strings or even certain internal or public IP
or domain black-lists, then this should be done during the connection - not
after the "ship has sailed". This way, the sending mail server would receive
a proper error-return and IT will be responsible of notifying its OWN users
(if indeed there was a legitimate user involved).

The same holds true of the ability to "fortify" certain accounts (such as
abuse@, postmaster@,...). We should be able to set up "policies" where any
mail directed to these accounts is not permitted to have more than xxx other
recipients (possibly as little as 1).

Moving on to SURBL and other content checking (even virus checking). Some
could be performed before confirming the receipt of the DATA command and
still refused at that time. While connection dropping at that point is not
an option offered by the RFC, it is now a very common and thus justifiable
practice.

All of these things are trivial to implement - yet, they never get
accomplished.  Consequently, I can't imagine them having the necessary
expertise to implement more sophisticated schemes, such as grey-listing.

Your solution is to use Imail as the great back-end "application software"
that it is, but to front-end it with more current technology by more capable
"systems" vendors. For small users, Imail might work out of the box, but for
more "exposed" mail domains, Imail is not a serious contender for spam
control and appears to have no ambitions in that direction.

Best Regards,
Andy



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Martin Schaible" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 8:44 PM
Subject: AW: [IMail Forum] Grey Listing


Hi,

I expected a short statement from ipswitch. So, is a native greylisting
somewhere on the horizon, or do we have to wait another year?



Mit freundlichen GrĂ¼ssen

To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/

Reply via email to