Nathan J. Mehl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes on 2 September 1999 at 16:16:07 -0400
>
> Oy. Guess I get to delurk now.
So, welcome to the qmail list. Were you hoping for a nice, quiet,
lurk? Oh well :-) .
> Hi, my name is Nathan J. Mehl. I run qmail on my home system,
> blank.org.
>
> I also happen to be the Senior Systems Administrator for Mail.Com.
>
> Let me state this for the record:
>
> MAIL.COM DOES NOT, NEVER HAS, AND NEVER WILL BLACKLIST SERVERS BASED
> ON THE http://maps.vix.com/tsi/new-rlytest.cgi SCRIPT.
>
> I'm afraid that the message sent by the abuse staff at Mail.Com to Mr.
> Bell was somewhat unclear. iq-ss5.iquest.net was blocked because we
> received an unexpectedly high volume of mail from it. Period. The
> speculation that it was an open relay was just that, speculation, and
> we provided the pointer to the vix.com relay tester as a courtesy to
> Mr. Bell.
>
> Here is the crux of the matter: we would have blacklisted the server
> even if it had "passed" the TSI Relay Test.
Well, that clears up one issue, but raises another. In the nature of
things, mail.com is likely to get lots of mail from certain servers --
those hosting mailing lists, those belonging to other big email
providers. My server, for example, hosts one fairly large monthly
newsletter that has over 1000 subscribers at hotmail.com. (Only
something like 12 at mail.com, or I'd be using you for the example).
So, each month when that goes out, hotmail.com will receive a big
batch of emails from me. If that list had 1000 subscribers at
mail.com, would you have blacklisted me?
Blacklisting anybody who sends you a lot of email sounds like a short
trip to a situation where your users can't subscribe to any large
email lists, or any email lists hosted by large list providers,
because you'll have blacklisted them all.
This is so completely nonsensical that it must not be, really, what
mail.com is doing. You're under no obligation to try to explain your
employer's policies to us, of course. And for that matter, your
employer is not required to have rational policies :-) . I don't
really want to convene the high court of marsupial justice right here
in the mailing list.
--
David Dyer-Bennet ***NOTE ADDRESS CHANGES*** [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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