SORBS on autopilot?
Brian Keefer
chort at smtps.net
Wed Jan 13 17:14:22 UTC 2010
On Jan 12, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 10:48:31AM -0800, Brian Keefer wrote:
>> I wouldn't say that necessarily accurate. I could be considered
>> part of the "anti-spam crowd", seeing as that's my line of work.
>
>> I think DULs are a really dumb way to block spam. Making a binary
>> decision off of information that's wrong as often as it's right it's
>> a great way to create collateral damage and just generally cause more
>> headaches for everyone.
>
> I've done a little bit of work in the anti-spam area as well (starting
> around 1983) and I can tell you that your viewpoint about DULs is
> roughly half a decade out of date.
Well not to drag this into a meta-thread, but you're not the only one with experience. I've been doing this for well over a decade too, so have a great many of my colleagues, not only at my employer, but at competing companies. I can tell you that your view on this is far from universal.
Parties who believe blanket blocking of IP space (sounds very 1999 to me, I was there, I did that stuff) is the best thing ever tend to not have access to high-quality reputation services and/or content-based analysis. See Joel Snyder's comments. BTW I'm not talking about anything Open Source.
There are lots of ways to block a lot of spam, but most of the perceived "low-cost" ways block a non-trivial amount of wanted mail. Call it whatever you like, the fact remains that most organizations that value e-mail as a communication medium do care about missing those wanted messages. If it was as simple as blocking dynamic IP pools and spammy .TLDs, organizations would be doing that instead of paying $$$ for sophisticated services & software.
That's the last I'll say on blanketing vs. intelligent blocking for this thread.
PS We agree on quite a few subjects, just not this one.
--
bk
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