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Spam has become much easier to avoid on inbound mail at some point. I turned off all Bayesian/heuristic based spam filtering around 2015 and now just check SPF
by jhugo 5y ago
Spam has become much easier to avoid on inbound mail at some point. I turned off all Bayesian/heuristic based spam filtering around 2015 and now just check SPF and DKIM, and have a fake first MX record. No "Junk" folder, everything that passes the checks goes to the inbox. I get maybe one spam mail every week or so, which I just delete.
- born2discover 5y agoCould you please elaborate on the "..., and have a fake first MX record" ?
- pferde 5y agoLegitimate SMTP servers will try your domain's MX records one by one, in order of priority, until they reach one that accepts the message. Spammers' scripts usually don't bother, they just try the first one and move on to the next address on their list. Of course, this is not 100% reliable, as it's not too difficult for spammers to adapt and improve their scripts. Of course, vast majority of spammers are either not sophisticated enough, or do not care enough to do so, so if you don't mind your incoming mail to be slightly delayed, it's kind of a low-hanging fruit, as it cuts off a huge amount of low-effort spammers.
- acatton 5y agoNot GP, but I think what they meant is having a MX record with a higher priority pointing to an unroutable IP blackhole IN A 240.0.0.1 @ MX 10 blackhole.example.com @ MX 20 mail.example.com
- jhugo 5y agoYup, exactly, for the reasons described in the sibling comment to yours. Doing it this way doesn't even delay mail much most of the time; many legitimate MTAs connect immediately to the priority-20 MX after failing to connect to the priority-10 one.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]