(ie, you can't communicate with any legit business that is using a DSL line for the company).
That's not even half-way accurate description of the situation. DSL mail servers can always receive mail.
As for them sending mail from DSL:
1. If the business-on-DSL can define a different PTR hostname, they escape the "subscriber PTR hostname" filtering that the big network operators and ISP are enabling (btw, do you think it is an accident that that systematic PTR sub-domains are being implemented?). This a perfect discriminator since the residential DSL spammers are condemned to the PTR hostname filtering.
2. If above is not available, then the business-on-DSL mail server just relays its outbound mail through the IP provider's SMTP gateway.
Both of these are free, and the second is always available, immediate and easy.
Why would the typical business absolutely insist on NOT relaying its outbound through the provider's SMTP gateway?
And, of course, AOL has so many other options that are not so draconian.
While everybody would like 100% precision, if you have a horrendous, expensive, unending, worsening problem that was costing you and your clients dearly, impacting your bottom line daily, and there is a 98% or 99%-accurate automatic solution, what would you do?
xample: add a header to all mail from a DSL server and give EACH user a setting they could click to decide to block or quarantine such email for review (with their own whitelist/address book to override such blocking) is only one such easy solution.
This is acceptable works if the user wants to, is able be involved (time + money) in reviewing 99% of the crap in order to see if the 1% is really receivable. This is insanity. Businesses say they don't want their employees wasting their company time screwing wiht desktop anti-spam. Dumping the 99% of the crap on the user to delete manually in order to see if the 1% is true or false positive.
Your dump-it-on-the-user "solution" also requires AOL to traffic all that spam (100s, maybe 1000s, of GB per day) through their network and to the users inbox and desktop. If you were AOL, what would you do?
Yes they have to process all that nasty mail
Exactly, end of story. Users may want to do it at home (farm porn in your kids' inbox), but businesses don't want employees doing it on company time.
And the reason most businesses DON'T report wasting $$$ on spam problems anymore is that they have solved the problem at the SMTP server level, not the desktop level.
but the end effect to their users in spam control is the same or better with a better fp ratio (or at least not their doing blocking legit msgs).
Maybe, maybe not, but what is not "maybe" is the $$$ lost at the desktop fingering through the junk.
A fully automatic 98%, 99% accurate server-level solution complemented by manual handling of the 1% exception is the best way to go.
Len
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