Re: [tlug] TLUG spam?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Godwin" == Godwin Stewart <gstewart@example.com> writes:

    Godwin> On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 22:52:34 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull"
    Godwin> <stephen@example.com> wrote:

    >> XEmacs's host doesn't use either RBL or Razor, to conserve on
    >> bandwidth.

    Godwin> This doesn't make sense.

Not to someone who thinks a false positive is more acceptable than a
false negative, but some people do care more about the reliability of
legitimate mail than about blocking spam, believe it or not.  Some
people even reject the doctrine of "collective responsibility"!

    Godwin> Are you trying to tell us that *downloading* and analysing
    Godwin> several hundred spams per day on the MX uses up less
    Godwin> bandwith than an RBL check per mail?

No, I'm telling you that the mail will be accepted anyway as several
of Tux's clients do not want to discard mail sight unseen.  As you
presumably know, all of the reasonably useful DNSBLs have at one time
or another blackballed large ISPs or corporate nets.  Some people
would prefer to make that decision on their own rather than delegate
it to Paul Vixie, or whoever.  In practice, the host just runs spamd
in local-only mode, and AFAIK so far everybody is reasonably happy
with the compromise, as with a little tuning and/or additional
procmail filtering, most clients are down to < 1 spam/day, and adding
RBL or Razor is unlikely to help much when you've already got 99%
accuracy.

There's discussion of turning on RBL at the MTA level, with the
intention of conserving bandwidth.  But that's very much a political
decision, so they're looking for near-consensus.


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