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Won't use spamcop much longer


pwellens

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One of the good things about spamcop is that it does notify the *sender* - not only the originating ISP, but also the ordinary end users (or at least is designed to be used that way).[snip]

No blocklist, including the SCBL controls the bounce message that the sender receives.

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No blocklist, including the SCBL controls the bounce message that the sender receives
.

That's why I said "designed that way" No bl user has to even send a bounce message of any kind (code or email); however, since the bounce messages are pretty similar, they probably are recommended.

Maybe not. Maybe people who use the scbl are all the kind of people who would send a message and would phrase it in a similar manner.

Miss Betsy

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Bounce messages are normally sent by the sender's (YOUR) mail server based on the responses given by the destination mail server. In these cases it is YOUR mail admin who configured the server to write what you see in the bounce message.

Ocassionally the destination mail server will accept email and after the SMTP session has ended it will decide to bounce the email for one reason or another (not usually because of a blocklist entry, those bounces usually happen BEFORE the email is accepted). In these cases it is the addressee's mail admin who configured the bounce message you receive.

In neither case are the blocklists involved in what you see in the bounce message.

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Yes, I understand that part. But are there not codes from the destination server that The sender email server translates into whatever message he delivers? For instance, "mail box over quota"

And surely the destination server must put (in code) the information about the IP address being in the scbl. Otherwise how would the sender ever get the message about his IP address being in the bl? His ISP doesn't know that. In fact some ISP's don't translate all the information contained in the code message and there may be many more people blocked by spamcop who just can't understand why their friend's mail box is always full.

The blocklist is not involved in deciding whether to send a message or what kind of message to send. However, the "bounce" messages reported by people who get blocked by the spamcop bl are very similar - like maybe a default or possibly a recommended way to use the scbl?

Miss Betsy

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But are there not codes from the destination server that The sender email server translates into whatever message he delivers?

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/294.html are the suggested code strings for Sendmail to offer up the rejection code, the URL to go see the listing for the specific IP, etc. Some apps allow this much definition, others only allow the reject, others only allow some small string length like 20 characters .... and, even if this type of full message is allowed in the response, the administrator still has to do the work to install it ...

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DNSbl that is "too aggressive"

Unfortunately no DNSbl is aggresive enough to block all spam, I would rather lose legitimate mail and block as much spam as possible. It's only a matter of choice..I chose spamcop... :D

We (and most businesses) can't afford to lose legitimate mail.

Most individuals would (I think) also not want to lose legitimate mail.

If your legitimate mail is expendable - that's odd, but your choice.

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DNSbl that is "too aggressive"

Unfortunately no DNSbl is aggresive enough to block all spam, I would rather lose legitimate mail and block as much spam as possible. It's only a matter of choice..I chose spamcop... :D

We (and most businesses) can't afford to lose legitimate mail.

Most individuals would (I think) also not want to lose legitimate mail.

If your legitimate mail is expendable - that's odd, but your choice.

...We (and most businesses) cannot afford the bandwidth, disc space, processor and other resources necessary to deal with all the spam that comes to us over the internet. As long as there are other means of communication (many, if not all, more reliable than e-mail even if there were NO blocklists), we (and most businesses) do not have a great deal to fear from undelivered e-mails and those that do will not be competitive until e-mail technology reaches the level that delivery is guaranteed even if, say, a backhoe breaks a line.

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until e-mail technology reaches the level that delivery is guaranteed even if, say, a backhoe breaks a line.

Wow .. the fact that the original concept was to survive a nuclear blast and still offer connectivity amongst the remainder of the 'network' (ARPA / DARPA days) tried to make that a reality ... and then the spammers arrived ....

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will not be competitive until e-mail technology reaches the level that delivery is guaranteed even if, say, a backhoe breaks a line.

Nothing is that reliable. For all the USPO slogan of 'Neither snow nor sleet...' there are still letters that disappear (sometimes forever and sometimes reappear years later).

Even Fedex and UPS manage to make mistakes sometimes.

It is totally ridiculous for people to expect that email will /always/ get there. OTOH, it is also totally ridiculous not to be able to conduct business in some other way.

Email problems seem to bring out the whiniest bunch. 'Not fair because it is the great ME who is being blocked.'

So? You are the first person in the world who has had a problem? Think of the loves lost because letters didn't arrive. If you are dealing in thousands of dollars of business, you can't pick up the phone if the email is broken?

Not the usual nice Miss Betsy tonight. Will have to move this to the Lounge soon.

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DNSbl that is "too aggressive"

Unfortunately no DNSbl is aggresive enough to block all spam, I would rather lose legitimate mail and block as much spam as possible. It's only a matter of choice..I chose spamcop... :D

We (and most businesses) can't afford to lose legitimate mail.

Most individuals would (I think) also not want to lose legitimate mail.

If your legitimate mail is expendable - that's odd, but your choice.

...We (and most businesses) cannot afford the bandwidth, disc space, processor and other resources necessary to deal with all the spam that comes to us over the internet. As long as there are other means of communication (many, if not all, more reliable than e-mail even if there were NO blocklists), we (and most businesses) do not have a great deal to fear from undelivered e-mails and those that do will not be competitive until e-mail technology reaches the level that delivery is guaranteed even if, say, a backhoe breaks a line.

We do about 90% of our business by email, and about 10% by courier,

and a very small amount by fax. In your zeal to endorse SpamCop, at

least acknowledge that at lot of important commerce now uses email.

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The primary problem of DNSbls, to me, is that too often the end user does not have control over the policy nor of how they are used. (the same can be true of content filters)

At the point where the most mail server's use the DNSbls is when they only know the I.P. address of the server trying to deliver the mail. They also know the name that the mail server claimed to be, and what name it's rDNS gives.

It does not know who the mail is for.

To get that information, the mail server has to agree to pay for the bandwidth to accept the mail, and store that mail on a local disk.

So just to give one user a choice not to use a specific DNSbl, the mail server operator must pay for the costs to allow all the spam into it that the DNSbl would have kept out.

They might be easier persuaded to whitelist some I.P. addresses to prevent a DNSbl error from listing them.

One thing that is different from DNSbsl is that any errors in them are immediately visible.

The error rate for them blocking real mail sources, even the spamcop.net one is still lower than any mail server wide content filter that I have seen. This is of course not taking into the account the DNSbl lists that are slowly listing the entire internet.

So again, which does someone prefer when a spam block or filter catches a real e-mail, a silent deletion, or a rejection message?

If all content filters would cause a rejection code to be sent, then their errors would be far more visible to the senders.

-John

Personal Opinion Only

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So just to give one user a choice not to use a specific DNSbl, the mail server operator must pay for the costs to allow all the spam into it that the DNSbl would have kept out.

That is a problem. The solution is to explain how DNSbl's work to consumers and the consumer can then choose the ISP who uses the kind of DNSbl they approve of. The same with content filters. For instance, I have no idea how hotmail filters spam out - what filters. Since it is a free service, I don't have any way to complain. However, the email service I pay for, as a consumer, I would like to be able to pick and choose the ISP who uses (or doesn't use) a particular form of filtering. If I could do so, I would pick an ISP who did not use content filters and used certain DNSbl's that returned a code message to my correspondents. But, at the present time, it is not easy to choose an ISP based on what kind of filters they use.

I think that your ISP does tell its users what it is using, but AFAICT, he is in a minority.

Miss Betsy

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At the point where the most mail server's use the DNSbls is when they only know the I.P. address of the server trying to deliver the mail.  They also know the name that the mail server claimed to be, and what name it's rDNS gives.

It does not know who the mail is for.

To get that information, the mail server has to agree to pay for the bandwidth to accept the mail, and store that mail on a local disk.

So just to give one user a choice not to use a specific DNSbl, the mail server operator must pay for the costs to allow all the spam into it that the DNSbl would have kept out

OK, I'm not an admin but I was under the impression that the RCPT TO: command came before the DATA command.

ISTM that it would be entirely possible that mail server software could be made to recognize which DNSBLs each user has chosen and selectively accept or refuse email based on the users choices before issuing the DATA command.

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At the point where the most mail server's use the DNSbls is when they only know the I.P. address of the server trying to deliver the mail.  They also know the name that the mail server claimed to be, and what name it's rDNS gives.

It does not know who the mail is for.

To get that information, the mail server has to agree to pay for the bandwidth to accept the mail, and store that mail on a local disk.

So just to give one user a choice not to use a specific DNSbl, the mail server operator must pay for the costs to allow all the spam into it that the DNSbl would have kept out

OK, I'm not an admin but I was under the impression that the RCPT TO: command came before the DATA command.

ISTM that it would be entirely possible that mail server software could be made to recognize which DNSBLs each user has chosen and selectively accept or refuse email based on the users choices before issuing the DATA command.

The MTA (mailserver) can be set to check the offending IP on receipt of the HELO or most any place before the DATA. This allows you to whitelist recipients like postmaster which should not be blocked for any reason, or to whitelist particular senders that should never be BL'ed just because their ISP is on the list.

So, you do not have to receive the entire mail, just as much as you need to establish whether you wan to receive the rest.

...Ken

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whitelist particular senders that should never be BL'ed just because their ISP is on the list.

unfortunately that is a vulnerability some spammer exploit... I can only speak for myself, I get viruses form places like nih.gov and .edu which are whitelisted..

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whitelist particular senders that should never be BL'ed just because their ISP is on the list.

unfortunately that is a vulnerability some spammer exploit... I can only speak for myself, I get viruses form places like nih.gov and .edu which are whitelisted..

Are you sure that the sender's addresses are not false? It has became commom to false the sender's address, this feature is used by each new virus...

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Are you sure that the sender's addresses are not false? It has became commom to false the sender's address, this feature is used by each new virus...

yes, the identification is based on parsing, it has been consistent since I started reporting and also used in spams...

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All I know is that it is happenning and if it continues the value of using spamcop as a blocklist is greatly diminished.

I'm in Australia and going over my email I do not see SpamCops blocklist hitting any?

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whitelist particular senders that should never be BL'ed just because their ISP is on the list.

unfortunately that is a vulnerability some spammer exploit... I can only speak for myself, I get viruses form places like nih.gov and .edu which are whitelisted..

That's not what I said... I whitelist only individual senders, not their mailservers. To whitelist the mailserver itself would be a mistake.

...Ken

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