Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 01:18:14PM -0500, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> Steven Champeon said the following on 3/25/04 12:23 PM:
> >>How about all the people who even though they don't use them are
> >>afraid to offend them lest they be blacklisted?
> >
> >
> >I don't know anyone like that. Sorry.
> 
> Then you haven't been doing your homework.  The essay "Why
> I Won't Use SPEWS" (http://www.clapper.org/spam/spews.html) was
> mentioned earlier

And easily shown to be the result of someone who doesn't even know that
SPEWS has two different sets of blocks with two different sets of
policies behind their creation and maintenance. Feh. Search the Net long
enough and you'll find an example of any opinion; you have to judge them
all on their own merits. Not that the example given is relevant, as it
isn't an example of "people who even though they don't use them are
afraid to offend them lest they be blacklisted". It doesn't sound like
the author of that piece gives a care if he offends SPEWS or not. And
he comes right out and says he /likes and uses/ blacklists.

But I'll grant you that there are probably lots of uninformed people out
there who hold all manner of idiotic opinions. So I withdraw my statement;
I thought you were referring to all the /rational/, informed people, etc.
By a certain standard, your example above is an argument /for/ DNSBLs
with sane policies. I've never argued for the use of DNSBLs without them,
and I've given several examples of some that I stopped using as a result.

  He writes:
   "It's especially important to be able to tailor and tune your spam
   blocking rules to maintain an appropriate balance between rejecting
   spam and rejecting legitimate email. You must be able to tune these
   rules on a site-by-site basis. Relying solely on someone else's
   spam-blocking policies is simply a bad idea.

   SPEWS fails to meet those basic criteria."

Well, then he doesn't have to use SPEWS (which he obviously doesn't know
how to use, anyway). So what? 

Look, I've been listed before - once on ORBS, back in 1998, for failing
a relay test despite having installed the best currently available
anti-relay hacks at the time (that I was aware of, anyway[1]). I was
notified, upgraded my server software, was retested and removed. I was
listed in RFCi for failing to read an abuse role account that I'd
created and forgotten to add to my mutt mailboxes list, but I was
removed from there as well once I showed that I'd rectified the situation.

Neither time did I lose any legitimate mail, partly because not enough
people we correspond with were using the DNSBLs, and partly because I
was notified and acted quickly to resolve the problems.

Each time, I learned something more about the responsibilities of any
mail administrator, and I'm grateful for it. You make it sound like it
is an error to ever list anyone in a DNSBL for fear of offending the
ignorant. I prefer to think that any responsible mail admin can be taught
things they don't know and learn something in the process. And the rest
I probably don't want mail from.

> and it links to Ed Felten's two messages at
> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.19.html#subj7 and
> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.21.html#subj4 where he
> details how his ISP suspended his account because someone
> convinced spamcop he was a spammer when, in fact, he wasn't,
> and that they refused to reinstate his account until it was
> cleared by spamcop for fear of offending spamcop.

Sounds like a problem with SpamCop's process, and with an idiot ISP, not
with the voluntary use of DNSBLs. <shrug> I don't use SpamCop for that
reason; I used to get the occasional bogus report of someone we host
advertising via spam (usually because of a URL reference to the site as
an example of similar resources in a message advertising Web design
services, etc.) It's annoying and silly and I've had to work with
SpamCop to get them to stop reporting these bogus things to me. They
stopped, and I'm happy.

Anyway, we'd best stop annoying everyone else. I'm sure they've formed
their opinions already, and it's just annoying watching you fail to
effectively articulate or defend your argument.

Sorry, Sil.

[1] Steve Coile's antispam hacks for sendmail 8.8.*
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