(my choice of comments to reply to make my position sound a lot more at odds with your overall post than I am, but there were a two parts I just had to respond to)
On Nov 28, 2004, at 9:00 AM, Bob Amen wrote:
It's very depressing and getting worse, according to my mail servers' statistics.
Hm. My mail servers' stats say it's getting better. For example, at home, I think I've only actually seen 1 spam message in the last month. I think 4 or 5 more got caught by spam assassin. And the rest are all filtered out by an aggressive greet delay, connection rate control, and spamhaus. At work, in the last month, we've cut our spam rates by about 90%.
Don't blame me and the other mail server admins if you can't get mail to our systems because you are sending from a machine on a DSL modem. Blame the spammers and those that buy from them!
Sorry, but that's a complete cop-out BS statement. The culpability of those who support spam is not a magic pardon for all anti-spam ends to justify their means.
You are precisely and exactly responsible for the accuracy and inaccuracy of the tools you use on your servers which may reduce spam OR interrupt legitimate communications. The actions of others (the spammers) do not excuse/absolve your actions. Show some spinal column and take responsibility for voluntarily choosing to use tools that have non-zero false positive rates.
Do blame me and other mail server admins if your mail can't get through my systems because you're being blocked by one of my techniques. I accept that risk, and I judge the benefits to be worth the cost. BUT, it would be irresponsible of me (and is irresponsible of you) to dismiss that cost or pass the buck on to someone else just because you come across someone who represents that statistical error range. You choose to use an inaccurate service. I choose to use an inaccurate service. DNSBL's, by their nature of trying to reject spam via IP address (when are not tied to IP addresses, nor are IP addresses necessarily tied to spammers), are inaccurate. They are perhaps reasonably inaccurate, if you choose a good one, but they are by their nature inaccurate for the actual end goal (reducing spam).
No one forces you or I to make that choice, no matter how much we feel forced to do it for practical reasons. We choose it not because we think it's perfect, but because we think its inaccuracies are acceptably small compared to their benefits in reducing spam. But don't try to glorify it, dress it up, cover it up, nor deny it.
It is what it is, and it is both ugly and your choice. People SHOULD blame you if their mail gets blocked by your server, and you should accept that blame without shame (because, hopefully, you've done your homework on that cost instead of just slapping some solution into place on the assumption that it's "good"). But you shouldn't pass the buck.
