mouss wrote (about the PBL):
> stop spreading FUD. if you know of false positives, show us so that we
> see what you exactly mean.
>
> a lot of people, including $self, use the PBL at smtp time.
As usual, it depends on your definition of “false positive”.
If you mean “IP address that should not have been in the PBL but was”,
that’s one thing. It’s a consistent definition, but not very useful for
stopping spam.
If you mean “solicited and/or non-bulk email that would have been
stopped by the PBL”, then I’ve seen a number of small Indian and Chinese
companies who are unaware of a lot of things, including the existence of
the PBL and that it’s a Good Thing to send email through a smart host
with a consistent IP address and reverse DNS.¹
Obviously, everyone’s email stream is different. Mine includes a
commercially-significant amount of email from small companies in those
two countries, and probably doesn’t include email from other countries
where this takes place.
But by this definition, false positives do occur, and my company’s
SpamAssassin installation has to try to handle them.
James.
¹ Fortunately, they’re also unaware that signatures should be removed
when replying. That, a standard corporate signature including company
registration data, a standard domain in each Message-ID that doesn’t
appear in public DNS, a few negatively-scored custom rules to detect
these, and the AWL mean that once someone has responded to one of our
emails, they get automatically whitelisted. So at least existing
correspondents don’t get blocked.
--
E-mail: james@ | Top Tip: If you are being chased by a police dog, don’t
aprilcottage.co.uk | try to get away by crawling through a tunnel, going onto
| a little see-saw, and jumping through a hoop of fire.
| They are trained for that, you see.
| -- “Bystander”, London magistrate
