Arrogant RBL list maintainers

Wed Dec 16 12:15:46 UTC 2009

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:12:22AM -0600, James Hess wrote:
> Many sites don't use names that will necessarily be meaningful to an outsider.

Then they should expect issues with mail acceptance by outsiders.

> Some sites might want to avoid  certain "meaningful"   RDNS entries
> since  spammers, hackers, and other abusive users that scan IP ranges
> can utilize the  RDNS to facilitate their activities.      

This is nonsense.  RDNS/DNS naming choices are a trivial obstacle to
spammers et.al. who went over this speed bump at 70 MPH years ago and
have been accelerating ever since.  This kind of security-by-obscurity
tactic is far more likely to draw their attention than evade it, as any
site using it has in effect run up a large flag with "we don't understand
security basics" written on it and thus made itself an attractive target.

---Rsk