Let me try one more time to explain what I mean:
>> What I meant was, do you try and stop people _sending mail back to_ Direct
>> Mail users? Because that's what the effect of blackholing companies for
>> having a 'drop-box' used by a 'spammer' is.
>
>Um, unless I'm misunderstanding something terribly obvious, that isn't the
>way it works. Sites on the 'black hole' list can _receive_ mail from
>anywhere, including from organizations like mine who happily respect the
>RBL, they just can't send it out to sites that observer the RBL list. That
>is, after all, why it's called the "Black Hole" list. Anything can go in
>but nothing can come out.
1. One user of a forwarding service that we run used his address on some
'spam'.
2. This address was actually a unique domain name, but was run through our
forwaring service
2. Because of the way our service works, about twenty thousand other people
were getting the service through the same service.
3. The main US upstream provide to our UK hosting service subscribed to RBL
and cut of 'ability to send mail'.
4. Which had the effect of cutting off most forwarding service to the US
for all of our clients.
Now, whatever way you look at that, one use of one address had a huge
effect on our service for a few days.
You may understand _how_ it works, but you don't understand _what_ it does.
BTW, there are claims being made that the RBL has hugely lessened the
amount of 'spam' on the Internet. I would be very interested to see the
source for this assertion.
I am also still waiting for anyone's definition of 'spam'.
Thanks,
Ivan
