>sales, and the bottom line. "We can't sign up a whole boat-load of new
>customers that way because 1% of them might be rabid spammers who'll
>we'll take months to track and erradicate!"
Or we can piss off all of our customers because 0.05% may be rabid
spammers and in the process lose 10% of our customers!
>No, no, you don't worry about the load -- you've got it mostly anyway
>because most people will be following your instructions and pointing
>their MUAs at your gateway anyway. The extra load will only be from the
>spammers.
So, I'm a spammer now. Thanks for the distiction. I'll be sure to turn
on smarthosts in Exim so all my mailing lists go through my provider's server
instead of mine, I'll bet they'll love that.
>And you don't just "notice" the increased load of spammer who's pumping
>through extra stuff -- you implement technically controlled limits to
>enforce your policies and the spammer can never blow your load out of
>the water
Right, that's why, without redirection, one takes 36 hours to "detect" a
spammer. If I took 36 hours to detect a spammer at my last job I would have
been severely repremanded, if not fired.
>Then you don't even have to
>cancel the account because the goof can never annoy enough people to
>"worry" about (i.e. only hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands,
>of messages get out, not millions or tens of millions). I.e. there's no
>operational cost.
And now you're encouraging it. Hey, it's ok as long as you go under the
limits. Not.
>You also get instant and total blocking of all open relay abuse. This
>alone is one of the best reasons to redirect outging SMTP to your own
>mail relay gateway.
You also get instant and totally pissed off customers. But, hey,
customers are cattle, we don't need them to run a consumer based service,
right?
>It *IS* worth it, especially when you balance it against the operational
>costs of dealing with <abuse> and <postmaster> mailboxes.
As opposed to lost revenue from lost customers.
>Service organizations sometimes seem to be blind to these costs, but they're
>very real.
Service organizations which provide no service. That's a concept.
>(though
>of course those sorts of support people are always treated like meat and
>aren't often paid enough to make them worthwhile holding on to).
Ah, ah, ah, you mean they're treated like you're advocating these people
treat their customers. Come now, let's go for consistancy.
>The legal risk is just that -- a risk, and it's minimal anywhere but in
>the USA, and it can be mitigated even there through appropriate AUPs and
>service contracts.
Greg, lemme let you in on a secret. Contracts, when it comes to pockets
with money, don't mean squat. If they did, do you think the Feds would be
looking into AOL because a bunch of volunteers are demanding WAGES? Think
about that one for more that the .2 seconds it takes you to dismiss most
facts.
>and they got beat upon with stolen credit card numbers being
>used by spammers and other types of abusers.
Right, its easy to steal credit cards. Darn, why didn't I think of that.
Oh wait, because it isn't easy.
- --
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
- -------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
