On Sun, Jan 06, 2002 at 02:35:09PM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > On 1/6/02 2:35 AM, "Marc MERLIN" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >> of our websites, our upstream providers get anonymous complaints about > >> "spamvertised website". They then waste their time relaying these > > > I receive [EMAIL PROTECTED], so I'm very familiar with those too :-( > > I hate to say it, but I effectively blackhole spamcop stuff. It's pretty > useless to me as a postmaster of large mail list systems. I got tired of > people using it as a tool to unsubscribe from mail lists because they're too > lazy to read the instructions in the message, and since spamcop hides all > useful data in the message they send to me, I toss them. > > On the other hand, my favorite problem with this stuff is the time I ended > up on the MAPs blackhole for hosting spam. It turned out that a subscriber > to one of my mail lists (one with e-mail confirmation, I'll note) happened > to be on a site that MAPs used an automated sniffer to find spam, and > someone on that mail list sent out a message dsiscussing what she was going > to do on vacation, and the MAPs sniffer decided it was a "you won a free > vacation" spam, and wrote me up. So I got blackholed because two subscribers > sent a legitimate piece of email to each other that was appropriate for the > list they were on. Eventually, after having a discussion with Dave Rand, he > figured out what was happening and promised to whitelist my site from > further annoyance by the MAPs servers (what finally got me honked was that > MAPs was testing my site for open relays about once a week. It turned out > that the mail sent to my subscriber on that MAPs sniffer site was having the > mail reported as spam or open relay about that often, and was actually > losing a significant chunk of email to this "spam blocker"). They did > whitelist me, for about three weeks, then the relay checks started again. At > that time, I told my subscribers to move or get off the list (they moved), > and put blocks up to prevent MAPs from contacting my server without > permission, since I considered by that time their repeated scans an attack > on my server. > > So if you see me make comments about how I'm not a big fan of these > blackhole systems, there are any number of reasons. This is just one of > them.
I agree with you. I block mail claiming to come from spamcop with 550 Blocked due to excessive frivolous or false complaints Spam is a distressing problem, and there are days I (as a postmaster) feel inundated, despite taking several measures. The sites I administer do DNS lookups, and decline to accept mail claiming to come from places that don't have some sort of valid DNS record. Using a 450, so they'll retry for a while. In case it's just a DNS screwup. This seems to dispose of quite a bit, and so far hasn't gotten me any angry phone calls. Everybody who cares at the sites I administer has individual procmail filters of varying strictness, and I sometimes spend a fair amount of time tuning them. I can see how some people would feel desperate for a solution. But I sure can't see letting automatic systems invoke sanctions. I guess I see this as somehow more reprehensible even than spam. -- Dan Wilder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers
