Re: [tlug] giving up on email

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Wednesday 14 April 2004 04:27 am, David Santinoli wrote:

> I also wonder how many believe Italy has the spammish reputation
> you depict. 

I've been in the anti-spam business for years, first as a postmaster and now 
as an employee of a spam-filtering service, and when I think of .it I think 
of spam first.  Perception may be different in Europe (or not?) but in in the 
U.S., most people who think of .it at all probably only think of it in terms 
of spam, the way they do of .cn or .kr (before those two emerged as the worst 
overseas spam relay sources, .it was probably number one).

> dropping this giant telco ex-monopolist in the same cauldron as other
> (more or less) clueful companies is a bit unfair IMHO.  

OK, why?  We have giant clueless companies over here that do little about 
spam, too, and I tar them with the same brush as smaller clueless ones.  
What's special about interbusiness.it that makes them deserve leniency while 
they continue to let spam flow like water through their networks?

> angry customers abandoning the black-hatted providers.  Selective
> blacklisting should favour the migration to more responsible ISPs.

It should, and in a more clueful world perhaps it would, but it doesn't seem 
to matter all that much.  Has SPEWS, Spamhaus SBL, et al ever driven a 
spam-friendly provider out of business, or even forced them to clean up their 
act, to the best of anyone's knowledge?  I think filtering is good, but it's 
value is in keeping spam off of our networks, rather than convincing any 
spam-friendly providers to <SANTANA>change their evil ways</SANTANA>.

Godwin wrote:
> > France has just made it illegal to publish proof-of-concept code
> > demonstrating a vulnerability in software:

See, I knew we should have bombed France instead of Iraq! ;-)
>

Jonathan
-- 
99 pounds of natural born goodness
99 pounds of soul!