HI,
On Wed, 28 May 2003 22:52:32 -0500 (CDT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In short, yes there are a lot of ignorant people that look no farther than
> the From: line. Fortunately DNSBL maintainers are stupid enough to let a
> single (l)user dictate what they put into their BL.
Are you missing a 'not' in there, i.e.:
"... DNSBL maintainers are _not_ stupid enough ..."
Or are you vaguely referring to SpamCop's busticated statistics and
unwillingness to remove obviously broken listings in a timely manner
when notified? IIRC, it doesn't take much to get a low-traffic site
falsely listed in bl.spamcop.net, assuming you take Declan McCullagh's
list as an example. Assuming you take Declan's musings on spam with more
than a grain of salt.[1]
Granted, on aggregate, comparing mail to many DNSBL's leads to pretty
decent accuracy as SpamAssassin shows. It's hard to fool all the
blacklists all the time. But for rejecting connections during the SMTP
transaction, where (with rare exception) false positives are
unrecoverable, you need to be sure the blacklist has a clear focus and
is maintained by people with the integrity to list precisely what they
say they're going to list.
For rejection, I try to stay with automated DNBLS (OPM,
proxies.relays.monkeys.com[2], ordb.org), content-neutral lists (DUL,
dynablock.easynet.nl, zombie.dnsbl.sorbs.net), and the more conservative
(lower collateral damage) lists like sbl.spamhaus.org. I don't have any
fundamental objection to SPEWS; I just won't reject mail based on it. If
I got more spam, I'd consider it. I don't really even object to
collateral damage so much; blocking all of Rackspace, China, or Korea
might be what it takes to force them to take responsibility for their
networks, go out of business, or become a national intranet. It worked
for AGIS...
Dunno. Most popular DNSBLs are popular because their listings are
consistent with their mission statements.
> Old netblock lists can cause a lot of grief.
> I can't keep up with my netblock listings anymore. I now rely more on the
> DNSBLs that should be up-to-date.
Amen to that.
Caveat utilitor,
--
Bob Apthorpe
[1] John Gilmore needs a new hobby.
[2] Though Ron is starting to blacklist networks that attack
www.monkeys.com which IMHO is a big step toward that slippery slope of
'spite listings'. At least he's got the courtesy to announce these
changes in policy before he makes them.
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