Author: Juha Saarinen Date: To: Eric Bullen CC: Phil.Pennock@globnix.org, exim-users@exim.org Subject: Re: [Exim] Nice way to cut down on spam.
On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Eric Bullen wrote:
> This is hardly anything to get confused about. I appreciate the concern
> though- with a 99.5% hitrate, I'll take my chances (which is hardly one).
> Wait- it's down to 99% since Juha replied to me, and that bounced.
Risking another mail bounce here, but... the reality of spam is that next
to none comes directly from .cn, .kr or .jp. In the vast majority of cases
it's US spammers relaying via Asian servers.
If you are the only user on your system, or the other users are in total
agreement with you, refusing mail from various IP blocks is fine. However,
it's a very blunt weapon, as you've noticed, because the NIC information
doesn't always tell you exactly where a certain IP range has been
allocated. You are guaranteed to block mail that you want to receive.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a good alternative, short of monitoring
mail logs and keeping a manual blacklist.
Hey... that would be a nice feature for Exim... a simple way to create and
maintain a file or database of blocked senders. I don't mean keeping the
addresses in exim.conf -- wouldn't it be good to have an "exim_blocked"
file (e.g) for lookups, without exim.conf ju-ju?