On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, LuKreme wrote:
If only more people understood this. Thanks for the post John, you summarized it very well. If anyone ever whines about the PBL again, please repost.
Firstly, my thanks to all who commented. Based upon the weight of this information, I have upgraded my MTA to full 'zen' RBL checking.
However, I would like to point out that there is a class of 'poor' internet users who want to send mail legitimately directly from their dynamic IP. These are people who either want to send more mail than their ISP's outgoing server permits, or wish to avoid additional fees from their ISP. Technically, yes, they are trying to get 'around' the policies of their ISP. But (by most notewrothy example) if they are outside the area for DSL service and *must* use the local cable high speed, and the cable company's pricing policy presumes that any sender of large volumes of mail simply 'must' be a commercial venture, immediately doubling the cost of the home internet connection to a 'business' one, then the operator of a small club mailing list may have no choice but to try and send their mail directly. Oddly enough, these users are often able to buy a static IP for a reasonable surcharge, so that they don't have issues with Dynamic IP blocklists, but then they can still run into the PBL if their cable company has sent in their IP ranges...
These people are not without 'other solutions'. But they are making the best of a bad one. Is this enough to warrant down-scoring the PBL? I no longer think so. But just so we're clear, just because an ISP says that they have a 'policy' does not mean we can brush off the attempts by people to bypass being *stuck* with those ISP's as not really being 'legitimate'.
There are always exceptions. Thanks again for the discusssion/info. - Charles
