Re: [Hampshire] SPAM issues

> RFC compliance is not just some illusory holy grail.

Yes, it largely is these days.

If you run a firewall that drops packets, for example, you're not
RFC-compliant. And that's fine, too.

> This is about behaviour
> that allows the mail system to properly inform its users about errors.

Users that insist on forwarding proxies without authentication lose that
privilege. It's very easy in these days of continuous connections to
ensure that there is never more than one AUTH-less SMTP link. And if
that's in place, you can bounce from any AUTH server, so it's only the hop
from "us" to "them" that needs to be treated carefully.

> 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.

Then I doubt you see very much traffic. True bounces are comparatively
rare. Some of the mail servers I look after get backscatter attacks
amounting to thousands of emails per hour. If I bounced any of that
traffic (I don't), those machines wouldn't stay connected to the internet
for very long.

> 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.

I too have seen a dramatic reduction in the amount of spam flowing. My
personal server, for example, has only seen 363 spams since 0402 this
morning when the logs were rotated. I haven't checked the corprat machines
yet (it is Sunday...)

Vic.