My ISP has been "blacklisted"!

In general we will never know it (we get no bounce mail or anything) -

If you're not getting a "bounce" there's something wrong with how you're
sending the email. Well...actually, that's less true today. I'll explain
why.

Once upon a time, the blocking tools ran at the server level. That is, the
mail server to which your mail server was trying to send the message would
reject it. The failed message would still be on your server, and it would
be your server's responsibility to send the "bounce".

However, users have - justifiably - become concerned about "false
positives". So the model has been changing. Instead of servers rejecting
email, the mail is now delivered but into a special folder. The user can
ignore this folder, scan it occasionally, delete it, or anything in
between.

Unfortunately, though, this means that the mail was accepted by the
destination server. This has a number of problems, but one of them is the
lack of an error message.

It's tempting for some to blame the users for this, in that they're the
proximate cause. However, the blame truly lies with the spammers. W/o
them, the problem simply wouldn't exist.

[...]
Royal pain, and a cure as bad or worse than the disease.

It is a pain, but most people disagree with your assessment. They'd rather
not be buried in spam. If you need to do some extra work as a result,
those people don't care.

It's just aother aspect of the cost-shifting nature of spam. The spammers
spam, and you pay the cost. That's part of why so many consider it
"theft".

- Andrew

Andrew Gideon wrote in
online.com:

If you're not getting a "bounce" there's something wrong with how
you're sending the email. Well...actually, that's less true today.
I'll explain why.

That would have been true four or five years ago. Not now. These days
VERY FEW of recipient ISP's or major companies bounce blacklisted
e:mail. It serves essentially no value except to double the load on the
internet. Spammers virtually never have their own "reply to" or "from"
address, so any bounce will go to either an invalid address or (these
days) more likely to someone whose address was harvested at random.

Spam that is not blacklisted but has an invalid recipient address is
still universally bounced. We get a few hundred per day of "Your mail
could not be delivered..." messages - all for mail we never sent.

I have also observed that most users have little idea what filtering
(blacklist or otherwise) is automatically imposed by their ISP. Often
even the bulk of the people at the ISP may not know. Thus we have the
situation where mail is sent... and simply never arrives. Tracking down
the point where it disappears can sometimes be a significant hassle.

Royal pain, and a cure as bad or worse than the disease.

It is a pain, but most people disagree with your assessment.

Tell that to my customers who are losing money when documentation
packages or other important materials are not arriving... because their
ISP is dropping selections of their e:mail without telling either them
or the sender.

I have absolutely no problem with ISP's providing anti-spam software.
But I would say there are two absolutely mandatory requirements:
1) They **must** tell their customers that they are doing it.
2) The customers should be able to "opt out" if necessary to insure the
proper receipt of necessary e:mail.

[BTW, another interesting problem with one ISP that took us a LONG time
to get fixed. That ISP had, among other unpublished anti-spam features,
software that would designate as spam anything where a number of users
received the same e:mail from the same sender within a short period of
time. Unfortunately, the number seemed to be about SIX!

Guess what would happen when certain aviation e:newsletters would send
out their weekly update! Yup... dropped!!! With no indication to the
end user, and not even tech support knew they were doing it.]


-----------------------------------------------
James M. Knox
TriSoft ph 512-385-0316
1109-A Shady Lane fax 512-366-4331
Austin, Tx 78721
-----------------------------------------------

("James M. Knox" wrote)
snip
I have absolutely no problem with ISP's providing anti-spam software.
But I would say there are two absolutely mandatory requirements:
1) They **must** tell their customers that they are doing it.
2) The customers should be able to "opt out" if necessary to insure the
proper receipt of necessary e:mail.


Our ISP (VISI - Minnesota) started using Postini last spring.

http://www.postini.com/

All of our quarantined (spam) messages can be viewed on my ISP's server. I
usually just block delete 400 at a time - after a quickie glance to see if I
recognize anyone. If I do nothing all week, the spam automatically falls off
the back end, to make room for "fresh spam".

Messages with a virus are highlighted - I've seen about 10 of those in the
past 8 months.

I can select different levels of protection - very easy options to use
..."beginner level intuitive".

I can rescue addresses trapped in our spam filter with a click. It's
actually about 3 clicks (and a Paste) which is something I'd streamline if I
was Postini.

Overall, we're quite pleased with the job they're doing. They're not 100%
infallible ...but post-Postini, the situation is 100% better than it was.

--
Montblack
http://lumma.de/mt/archives/bart.gif

"Montblack" wrote in
:

Our ISP (VISI - Minnesota) started using Postini last spring.
http://www.postini.com/

All of our quarantined (spam) messages can be viewed on my ISP's
server. I usually just block delete 400 at a time - after a quickie
glance to see if I recognize anyone.

Postini does a pretty good job, although I like Britemail a bit better
(virtually zero false positive rate, at the cost of letting a few more
spams through).

I monitor what our system here classes as spam, and it varies a bit from
week to week. Right now I am showing just over 17,000 from last night.
Just a few months ago it would have been more like 3000. Needless to say,
I don't check for false positives, which is why I'd rather let a few spam
get through than not.

-----------------------------------------------
James M. Knox
TriSoft ph 512-385-0316
1109-A Shady Lane fax 512-366-4331
Austin, Tx 78721
-----------------------------------------------