--On July 27, 2006 3:03:06 PM +0200 Peter Klavins <klavins@netspace.net.au> wrote:
But you're saying that the one type of server I shouldn't connect is a mail server? Because I couldn't cope? I don't think that's reasonable. I understand that you may not want to accept mail directly from me because of arbitrary rules like you wouldn't accept mail from someone born in Australia but living in Italy, but I don't think it is reasonable for all the mail admins in the world to not accept my mail because it is assigned from a pool of addresses for all I know may be designated somewhere as being dynamic (my bet is that they are: what does 217-133-15-nnn.b2b.tiscali.it say as an IP address to you?).
One of my biggest SPAM problems actually, *.b2b.tiscali.it is in the top 25 of zombie hosts spewing junk. Only reason it's not listed on our private blocking list is because there are too many who are not or who are keeping their gear clean. There are a lot of dynamic hosts though in that range from the evidence I've seen at our mail server logs.
I for one would like to know how to become professionally competent in mail server administration, slowly, at my own pace, gradually introducing more and more complexity as time goes on, just as I did with apache etc. I expect to be capable of doing this judging by other things I have learnt in the past. I may make mistakes, I may not designate some header fields correctly in my first attempts, but I would hate to be banned from trying simply because I was blacklisted by SORBS. But I certainly would never send SPAM, I am too professional and careful for that. In fact, I would argue that learning at my own pace on my ADSL would be far preferable than learning in the sysadmin group of some organisation with a network connection that is truly static.
It's mails erver administration yes, but *MOSTLY* it's keeping the damned windows boxen and web servers etc uninfected in cases like yours. Mail servers don't generally ship as open relays, and rarely does an ISP has problems talking to a non-open-relay mail server that is legitimate. However due to all the problems we all have from cheap dynamic space it's becoming more and more common to block it because ISPs wont' do the simple responsible thing. Block port 25, and whitelist their customers who ask to use it directly, but enforce the rest to use their mail servers.
But you're saying that even if I succeed in becoming a competent mail admin, I shouldn't join the peer-to-peer world of mail servers simply because I have this IP address? And if my netblock (because of some other IP address in it generating spam) gets blacklisted by SORBS I can say bye-bye to sending mail because of the difficuly I would have in getting my ISP to change anything? [In fact, by the way, I think that this netblock is on some blacklist somewhere, because a lot of my mail sent via the ISP's SMTP server smtp.tiscalinet.it (like this posting) doesn't arrive at the destination in Australia (it only happens with Australia and AOL, is that because SORBS is there?), it just ends up in a black hole because I don't get anything in return either.]
Tiscali has been earning (as with comcast, and verizon, etc) a well deserved reputation for *not* dealing with SPAMmers.
AOL is AOL, AOL does what AOL does. AOL doesn't use SORBs. AOL maintains their own lists with their own policies. AOL also has a huge false positive rate problem on that list, mostly because the majority of AOL users can't figure out the difference between UCE/UBE and mailing list traffic or emails from grandma June who they don't want to talk to.
SORBS is *ONE* list of *MANY*.