Reject at SMTP level or Report them all via quick report

[iconnor]

I have control over my mail server and can select to reject all mail listed in the blacklist or let them through and report them.

What is the best method to adopt? On the one hand, you can can report more spam but the other is that they are already blacklisted so what other good can you expect from a quick report?

As I understand, the quick report does not report the URLs in the spam, and there is no way I would have time to do more than a quick report on all these messages.

I have also added a "post" filter to my mail so that I can catch mails in black lists in a retrospective way. Often the spaming server is not black listed when originally delivered, but it seems like most get eventually listed. So, is there much value in reporting these after they have already been black listed?

[Telarin]

Personally, I reject during SMTP simply because of the volume of spam that hits my server, and because it is important that a customer get a clear rejection and know there is a problem immediately rather than having their email lost in a junk e-mail folder somewhere.

The drawback to using the SCBL in a blocking fasion is that it is a VERY aggressive list, and you will lose some legitimate emails. But unless your mail server offers some kind of scoring/ranking system that will use a DNS blocklist, it is often the best choice.

As far as the advantage of reporting email from servers already on the blocklist, it DOES reset their counter so they stay on the blocklist longer, however, I think you will probably find it more aggrevating than rewarding to handle any significant amount of spam this way. Its fine if you're only receiving a few dozen per day, but if you are talking about hundreds or thousands, sorting through the subject lines to figure out which to report, and which might be false positives will likely quickly become tiresome.

[iconnor]

Personally, I reject during SMTP simply because of the volume of spam that hits my server, and because it is important that a customer get a clear rejection and know there is a problem immediately rather than having their email lost in a junk e-mail folder somewhere.

Thanks, that makes sense. We use Lotus Domino and it allows us to customize the response which directs people to the 24 our phone number if they get blocked. This is indeed better than being filtered into a Junk Mail folder.

[turetzsr]

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As I understand, the quick report does not report the URLs in the spam, and there is no way I would have time to do more than a quick report on all these messages.

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Hi!

...If you wish to report some but don't have time to report all the spams with URLs, you could just choose to do a full report for only those you have the time and inclination. No great loss if you choose not to do a full report on any, though, as far as most of us are concerned, as reporting to the source of the spam is the main thing. Thanks!

[iconnor]

The only trap that I found with quick reporting is making mistakes

Especially reporting emails from Don, the spamcop admin, as spam is really embarrassing and takes some explaining and humbling apologies...

I have started to use ASSP as a proxy type filter and will try to do some manually reporting for when I catch them quick enough to make a difference. My goal is to cut it down so that there is not too much to report - but that has been the goal for the last 6 years

[Telarin]

I use a whole series of BLs for rejecting mail. SCBL, spamhaus XBL-RBL, and a number of regional lists (china, brazil, korea) basically anywhere we have no customers that produces lots of spam. I have cut down incoming spam server wide from several thousand emails per day to a very managable 20-30 per day. Those I report using quick reporting. That works well for me.