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> "heuristsics, shared models, and tea-leaves" I have no idea how blocking TLDs of entire countries with hundreds of millions of citizens can be considered a v

> "heuristsics, shared models, and tea-leaves" I have no idea how blocking TLDs of entire countries with hundreds of millions of citizens can be considered a valid anti-spam advice. Just like the parent comment explained, you are actively pushing all of those people into the hands of Gmail (or Yandex in this case).

lisper 3y ago
There is only one country TLD on my list, and frankly I have absolutely no moral qualms about blocking that one.
- swexbe 3y ago
  .tv and .ru, that’s 2.
  - popcalc 3y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think .tv domains are pretty pricey. They're loved by people who need a bulletproof domain for their sketchy business but I don't see how they would be useful as a disposable spam source that's going to get burned quickly anyways.
    - lisper 3y ago
      > I think .tv domains are pretty pricey $35/year. That's not too bad. Compare to e.g. https://tld-list.com/tld/protection https://tld-list.com/tld/protection
- zem 3y ago
  what did Tuvalu ever do to you?!
  - lisper 3y ago
    Oh, right, I actually forgot that .tv was actually a country code and not a TLD for television. So... my apologies to the 12,000 residents of Tuvalu. I'm sorry to have to block you all, but for some reason your country code attracts spammers like flies to honey.
AndyMcConachie 3y ago
Keep in mind we're talking about a single person here. It's possible that everyone's individual list of tricks would be different given where they live and who they communicate with. If you were to use this blunt instrument on a few million subscribers you would undoubtably experience more false positives than OP experiences.
krisoft 3y ago
> I have no idea how blocking TLDs of entire countries with hundreds of millions of citizens can be considered a valid anti-spam advice. It is very different if you offer it as a service to other people, or if you do it for yourself. If you are doing it for yourself you know if you expect emails from country X or not. And if things change and suddenly you have a pen pal from there you can change your filters easily. So you can live with such simplifying assumptions. If you are providing email services to masses of other people then you can’t make these assumptions of course. You have to use more sophisticated means then.
- Avamander 3y ago
  > If you are providing email services to masses of other people then you can’t make these assumptions of course. You have to use more sophisticated means then. These things just get thrown in the large pot of heuristics.
denton-scratch 3y ago
I used to do this at one time. I had no users who corresponded with addresses in Russia, Romania or China, and those represented a very high proportion of inbound spam. Nowadays (irony of ironies!) most inbound spam is from gmail.
- cornholio 3y ago
  So, bigotry as a spam filter. Hey, whatever works for you.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Not bigotry at all. If my server gets a lot of chinese spam, and none of my users reads chinese, then it's just silly to waste bandwidth and storage on messages that aren't going to be read.
    - cornholio 3y ago
      But you aren't blocking the Big5 character set, you've determined that 1 billion people can't possibly learn English and have no reason to contact your users. Because reasons.
      - Avamander 3y ago
        When Chinese and Russian ISPs start taking abuse complaints seriously then they can be given the benefit of the doubt. But until that happens they're going to remain on most RBLs for a good reason.
        cornholio 3y ago
        So you've determined an entire population has a certain behavior because of past interactions with other entities from that continent-sized part of the world. Do tell me more about this wonderful new method of spam filtering with absolutely no bigotry.
nkrisc 3y ago
If I ran my own, personal email server, I could probably block the TLDs of every country in Asia, Africa, and South America and never actually block a single email. I don’t receive emails from those TLDs and I quite possibly never will. If I expected to, I wouldn’t block it. I don’t travel the world, making friends in every country I go to. That sounds nice, but that’s not my life. The poster you’re replying to is talking about their filtering method for their own email. Presumably they know if they expect to ever receive an email from a given country.
- froggit 3y ago
  Is there a particular reason to go ahead and preemptively blacklist every country's TLD you doubt you'd ever receive an email from? Would it not be better like if spam isn't expected to be an issue you might as well leave it open, then if you do one day receive a spam from that TLD, block it then? Otherwise, let's hypothetically say you have a friend named "jacob peter" who really likes his initials (and doesn't understand the topic of this discussion), so he registers somewhere in Japan that lets him have dot-JP as his TLD. The only hypothetical way he knows to contact you is via your email server (let's also assume he doesn't do stuff like social media, phones, etc., so he can't find any other way and you have no way to contact him). If you have hypothetically preemptively blacklisted all of Asia's TLDs, then you'd never talk to him again for as long as you live, right?
  - nkrisc 3y ago
    If this entirely fictional friend only ever emailed me from his .jp email address and never contacted me any other way, I guess so, I would never talk to him again. Since he’s not real I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe he’s kind of a dick.

lisper 3y ago

There is only one country TLD on my list, and frankly I have absolutely no moral qualms about blocking that one.

swexbe 3y ago
.tv and .ru, that’s 2.
- popcalc 3y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think .tv domains are pretty pricey. They're loved by people who need a bulletproof domain for their sketchy business but I don't see how they would be useful as a disposable spam source that's going to get burned quickly anyways.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > I think .tv domains are pretty pricey $35/year. That's not too bad. Compare to e.g. https://tld-list.com/tld/protection https://tld-list.com/tld/protection
zem 3y ago
what did Tuvalu ever do to you?!
- lisper 3y ago
  Oh, right, I actually forgot that .tv was actually a country code and not a TLD for television. So... my apologies to the 12,000 residents of Tuvalu. I'm sorry to have to block you all, but for some reason your country code attracts spammers like flies to honey.

AndyMcConachie 3y ago

Keep in mind we're talking about a single person here. It's possible that everyone's individual list of tricks would be different given where they live and who they communicate with. If you were to use this blunt instrument on a few million subscribers you would undoubtably experience more false positives than OP experiences.

krisoft 3y ago

> I have no idea how blocking TLDs of entire countries with hundreds of millions of citizens can be considered a valid anti-spam advice. It is very different if you offer it as a service to other people, or if you do it for yourself. If you are doing it for yourself you know if you expect emails from country X or not. And if things change and suddenly you have a pen pal from there you can change your filters easily. So you can live with such simplifying assumptions. If you are providing email services to masses of other people then you can’t make these assumptions of course. You have to use more sophisticated means then.

Avamander 3y ago
> If you are providing email services to masses of other people then you can’t make these assumptions of course. You have to use more sophisticated means then. These things just get thrown in the large pot of heuristics.

denton-scratch 3y ago

I used to do this at one time. I had no users who corresponded with addresses in Russia, Romania or China, and those represented a very high proportion of inbound spam. Nowadays (irony of ironies!) most inbound spam is from gmail.

cornholio 3y ago
So, bigotry as a spam filter. Hey, whatever works for you.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Not bigotry at all. If my server gets a lot of chinese spam, and none of my users reads chinese, then it's just silly to waste bandwidth and storage on messages that aren't going to be read.
  - cornholio 3y ago
    But you aren't blocking the Big5 character set, you've determined that 1 billion people can't possibly learn English and have no reason to contact your users. Because reasons.
    - Avamander 3y ago
      When Chinese and Russian ISPs start taking abuse complaints seriously then they can be given the benefit of the doubt. But until that happens they're going to remain on most RBLs for a good reason.
      - cornholio 3y ago
        So you've determined an entire population has a certain behavior because of past interactions with other entities from that continent-sized part of the world. Do tell me more about this wonderful new method of spam filtering with absolutely no bigotry.

nkrisc 3y ago

If I ran my own, personal email server, I could probably block the TLDs of every country in Asia, Africa, and South America and never actually block a single email. I don’t receive emails from those TLDs and I quite possibly never will. If I expected to, I wouldn’t block it. I don’t travel the world, making friends in every country I go to. That sounds nice, but that’s not my life. The poster you’re replying to is talking about their filtering method for their own email. Presumably they know if they expect to ever receive an email from a given country.

froggit 3y ago
Is there a particular reason to go ahead and preemptively blacklist every country's TLD you doubt you'd ever receive an email from? Would it not be better like if spam isn't expected to be an issue you might as well leave it open, then if you do one day receive a spam from that TLD, block it then? Otherwise, let's hypothetically say you have a friend named "jacob peter" who really likes his initials (and doesn't understand the topic of this discussion), so he registers somewhere in Japan that lets him have dot-JP as his TLD. The only hypothetical way he knows to contact you is via your email server (let's also assume he doesn't do stuff like social media, phones, etc., so he can't find any other way and you have no way to contact him). If you have hypothetically preemptively blacklisted all of Asia's TLDs, then you'd never talk to him again for as long as you live, right?
- nkrisc 3y ago
  If this entirely fictional friend only ever emailed me from his .jp email address and never contacted me any other way, I guess so, I would never talk to him again. Since he’s not real I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe he’s kind of a dick.