[NTLUG:Discuss] the breaking point of spam

Chris Albertson alb at chrisalbertson.com
Tue Jul 25 15:10:25 CDT 2006


Greylisting works really really well for me. (At least, until spammers 
figure this one out too...)
I use postgrey with postfix MTA. No complaints.
(I use a series of other methods as well... like HELO reverse lookup, 
challenge response & spam assassin)

Chris

Wayne Walker wrote:
> 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
>>     
>
>   



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