[NTLUG:Discuss] the breaking point of spam

[Wayne Walker]

Look into greylisting.  Almost 0 false positives ever from day 1.
95% decrease in spam, from day 1.

Wayne

http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 10:14:20AM -0500, brian at pongonova.net wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 10:24:09AM -0500, Richard Geoffrion wrote:
> > Something is wrong with the technology when 91% of an email server's mail is
> > spam. 
> 
> Personally, I hold a dim view on lists that automatically blacklist
> dynamic addresses.  Why?  Because most of the "big" ISPs (including
> your favorite) no longer give non-business users the option of a
> static IP.  I've seen outbound messages sit for hours in Comcast/Yahoo
> queues, so I choose to run my own mail server.  I've gotten to the
> point now where I delete most bounced e-mails that are returned as
> blacklisted simply because I'm sending from a dynamic block (even
> though I've had the same dynamic address for over a year!).
> 
> I used to run a challenge/response system (TMDA), but decided that the
> there were too many people out there who simply do not know what to do
> when presented with a confirmation e-mail.  
> 
> SPF is a failure.  I see way too many spams get through that have been
> verified through SPF.
> 
> So now I run SpamAssassin.  It catches about 95% of the spam that
> arrives (about 50% of that seems to be rejected upon initial
> connectiion).  False positive rate is close to zero (out of thousands
> of spams, I've not picked up a single false positive in many months,
> but this was after several months of tweaking the SA filters and
> scores).
> 
> The ISPs won't begin to address the problem until they are forced to
> do so.  And I really don't want Congress getting involved (just look
> at how badly the CAN-SPAM Act was screwed up), legislating what we can
> and can't do.  I've stopped being pissed off about spam, and simply
> deal with it the best I can.
> 
> I doubt the Linux community has enough clout to really get anything
> done.  
> 
>   --Brian
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://ntlug.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 

Wayne Walker

www.unwiredbuyer.com - when you just can't be by the computer

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