Re: More sorbs blacklisting
On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 03:09:30AM +0200, Anders Breindahl wrote:
> It's a dilemma. In the one hand we have freedom of expression, in
> the other the demands of customers. That is, sacrificing every-Joe's
> ability to set up a mail server on his own domain on his high-end DSL
> line will drastically bring down the amount of illegitimate mail in
> later (and more resource-demanding) filtering and thereby the amount
> of false-negatives in costumers' mailboxes.
it's got nothing at all to do with free speech of "freedom of
expression".
the OP is 100% entitled to say whatever he wants to say.
at the same time, i am 100% entitled to refuse to accept his email on
my servers for any reason whatsoever (including no reason at all). so
is anyone else. his right to free speech does not include the right to
force me or anyone else to listen.
my server, my rules. one of the rules i choose to use on my mail server
is that i do not want mail direct from dynamic IP addresses. like it or
not, nobody except me has any say at all in this.
i use DULs because, in my experience, almost all mail from dynamic/etc
addresses is spam or viruses. so much so, that i really don't care in
the slightest about the miniscule number of legitimate mails that may
come from those addresses. as far as i am concerned, if it's important
to the sender they will find some other way of contacting me that does
not require me to accept millions of spam and virus mails. i.e. it's
their problem to solve, not mine.
worrying about the tiny number of legit mails from dynamic address space
makes even less sense than worrying about the possibility of being
killed by a meteorite made of solid gold. it *might*, in theory, happen,
but almost certainly wont. i'm more likely to be killed in an airplane
crash, and far more likely to be killed by a car than i am to receive
legit mail from a dynamic address - and i don't worry at all about
either of those possibilities...they're so remote, they're not worth
caring about.
> However, ideologically (hold the flames for just a paragraph), it's
> a compromise. Some sort of registration (at your ISP or by buying
> netblocks yourself) is going to be needed if you want to send mail,
> anyway -- and besides discouraging people from setting up their own
> mail servers for fun and learning, it'll cause the Internet to become
> more centralized around the big players.
if people want to set up mail servers for fun and learning, they can do
it on their own private network and not subject the net to yet another
half-arsed incompetent who doesn't yet know what they're doing (if they
ever will).
> That's reason enough for me (albeit, I wouldn't assume that an
> employer would be as easily convinced) to continue the non-binary
> choices of bayesian and otherwise content-oriented filtering methods,
> while something fundamentally fixing the feasibility of spamming is
> made up.
content filtering is a useful tool in the anti-spam arsenal. as are
RBLs and DULs. and local blacklists. and header and body checks regular
expressions. and numerous other techniques. none by themselves is
sufficient. in combination, they can block well over 99% of all spam at
the SMTP level and (via SpamAssassin) detect & tag almost all of the
remainder.
> And in a technical note; the meaning of having valid reverse DNS is [
> weird tangent deleted ]
huh? we're talking about SORBS DUL, not about whether the reverse DNS
is valid or whether it matches the forward DNS.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> (part time cyborg)
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