Re: [Hampshire] SPAM issues

Gordon Scott wrote:
>> Yep. The choice is between becoming non-compliant with the RFC, or
>> participating in a backscatter attack.
>>
>> That's not a difficult decision in my book...

RFC compliance is not just some illusory holy grail. This is about behaviour
that allows the mail system to properly inform its users about errors. I would
not be willing to impair the functionality of my mailserver for my users just to
save some innocent people from sharing a little of the burden of spam. That's
not a difficult decision in my book.

> Particularly as much of the backscatter in turn produces further
> incoming backscatter.

That's not possible. Bounces are sent with the null MAIL FROM address '<>' and
no bounces are generated should these be undeliverable.

> Sadly the spammers have wrecked the original reliability of email.

Spammers haven't done anything to the reliability of e-mail. They've only
affected the signal-to-noise. It's the disparate collection of anti-spam
techniques employed by sysadmins, some of which are misconceived and others are
poorly understood, which damages the reliability.

I'm all for not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Anyway, I've been receiving remarkably little spam since the takedown of those
big spammers last year. It's dropped from around 30 a day in September to 5 a
day in December.

Dan