Re: blacklists
On Thursday 09 December 2004 00:42, Michael Loftis wrote:
> See my just prior response on this thread, most people don't
> understand bounces. Yes it could be argued a bounce needs to be
> reformatted so the humans can read it easier, but it's not my system
> generating the bounce message, I'm just telling the attempter.
> Whether it's permanent or temporary doesn't matter.
We reject a huge amount of mail with RBL's. A very small percentage of
it is false positive. A very small percentage of those false positives
end up as complaints with our help desk.
However a significant portion of those who complain are business people,
company directors, IT support staff etc, and if they are complaining to
us they are either one of our customers or they are transacting with
one of our customers. (This does not mean they understand the bounce
message).
By treating these complaints with a little care we have managed to swing
(or keep) a number of large business clients, or at least establish a
relationship with them which will ensure they remain our clients for a
long while.
We have a simple policy for handling RBL related complaints.
- If the rejecting list was Spamcop, we whitelist the IP and e-mail the
sender to say their mail will be accepted. Spamcop is not an exact
science, whitelisting a few bona-fida mail servers is quicker than
explaining our motivation for using it in the first place.
- For any other list we send a standard messages to the sender and copy
to the original intended recipient explaining that their mail is being
sent from an open relay. The message has some technical info and links
and a suggestion to forward the message to a technically competent
administrator. (This involves copy and pasting two e-mail addresses and
the IP of listed server into a pre-formated e-mail.)
> Answer: find their spammers, and squash them. This puts the support
> load on the offender, not on me. Which is where it should be. If
> they user sender gets frustrated enough and finally calls us, emails
> us via alternate channels (maybe via the recipient) or whatever,
People who conduct business with e-mail notice very quickly when their
mail disappears into a black hole. They get very frustrated very
quickly and are not shy to change ISP's, even if they never understand
the problem nor have any idea who is at fault. We have found that a
little informed feedback in this situation is very cost effective
marketing.
But back to the subject. I prefer a 5xx permanent error or that results
in an immediate bounce message.
Regards
Ian
--
Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P. O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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