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Great! Yet another blacklist to cause collateral damage for us poor email admins. If there's one type of person than invokes homicidal rage in my otherwise fa
by SageRaven 15y ago
Great! Yet another blacklist to cause collateral damage for us poor email admins.
If there's one type of person than invokes homicidal rage in my otherwise fairly mellow personality is the arrogant email admin who won't allow an exception so a person on one of my RBL-listed servers can communicate with one using his servers. The worst is flat-out rejecting email (as opposed to using scoring) because the sender's mail server is listed on a single RBL of the fifty or so that are out there. It's not like the users have any knowledge of the ugly politics involved with the RBL vigilantism that goes on behind the scene of the mail servers, so in the end they are the ones who suffer pointlessly.
I once talked to an admin who had the balls to be proud that he forced one of his employer's satellite offices to capitulate and get removed from all RBLs so they could communicate with corporate. Let me tell you... I've never communicated with a more self-righteous prick.
Yeah, yeah, I know: you have the right to do whatever the hell you want on your mail servers. However, when you take the supposed high road by denying proven legitimate email due to a listing on some 3rd party list, you're being a major asshat.
We can achieve 99.5% effective filtering with per-mailbox statistical filtering. There's no reason to create yet more lookup traffic dedicated to the spam problem.
The entire RBL concept is broken. Please don't add to this ecosystem.
(Note to the creator, admins, and users of backscatterer.org: There's a special hell for each and every one of you.)
- mike-cardwell 15y agoEmail would be a dead technology without the existence of RBLs.
- SageRaven 15y agoHyperbole much? I've run a few mail servers in my time, never having used RBLs, and they do just fine with statistical filtering. I've used email services (and did admin work for a couple), and had nothing but trouble with RBL-related issues. RBLs are run by people with political axes to grind, and RBLs are used by people who haven't been burned enough to know any better.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoNo hyperbole. You've clearly not run any large mail systems.
- spydum 15y agoTo be fair, Blacklists are not the problem. Blanket spam policies are. If you give the user control over the spam-detection devices, and let them make decisions on what they enable, you are in a much better position. Check into surgemail (commercial software, but has a free 5 user license). It does this superbly.
- SageRaven 15y agoI'll agree that RBLs are simply one weapon in an arsenal of those used to fight spam, and that they can be abused just like anything. However, I personally think they are among worst of the tools, and that they should be avoided. Simply based on aesthetics, the idea of generating extraneous traffic for 3rd party opinions about the spamminess of each of your emails offends my sensibilities. Next is the enormous time overhead of getting removed from such lists. The fact that some RBLs actually charge to be moved immediately is unconscionable. Large sites that maintain their own internal RBLs are no better. Ever try to get a tainted IP address to deliver to AT&T, or Yahoo, or Comcast? It's a nightmare. If you're unfortunate enough to purchase hosted IP space that was once home to a spammer, you may as well demand they give you a new IP block or cancel the account ASAP.