Laura, The KILL file actually BLOCKS the sender from ever delivering the message. It looks to the From: line that is sent by the originating SMTP server, and basically tells it to "get lost" if it matches one of the domains or wildcards you have in place. It's obviously preferable to block spam than to accept and delete, but the From: line is forged so often that you are probably not going to stop a lot of spam with it.
The URL blacklist, on the other hand, only scans through the message after it has been accepted by IMail. Therefore, the sender is never sent a notification (550 error) that the message has been rejected. It goes through the text or HTML in the BODY of the e-mail only, and does whatever you want with the message based upon your preferences. There is every incentive for spammers to forge the sending address in the headers, but they pretty much have to list a valid URL in their spam if they want anyone to respond to it. The big exception to this rule is the many "University Diploma" schemes that list a phone number, instead of a URL. With those, you pretty much have to rely on RBL tests or Bayesian filtering to catch them. Hope this is of some help. William Van Hefner Network Administrator Vantek Communications, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Laura Bhandari > Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 11:24 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [IMail Forum] URL Domain Blacklist vs. SMTP kill file > > > > First off, let me say thanks to all of you all because I am > getting more and > more comfortable with trying the different features available on IMail > thanks to all the questions and comments posted to this list. But > sometimes, > they also lead me to be a little more confused. > > So... my question is... functionally, what is the difference between URL > Domain Blacklist and SMTP kill file. I realize that the kill list actually > lets you list a specific user (like "[EMAIL PROTECTED]") but I had > also listed > several domains preceeded by the @ symbol. Is that the only > difference? Am I > not using this correctly? I have been using the kill list for > some time but > only started using the url domain blacklist yesterday (special thanks to > William Van Hefner for that inspiration :). > > Thanks. > ~Laura > > > 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/ > > 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/
