On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Nico Erfurth wrote:
> You really shouldn't use the spamcop blacklist, please check this link:
> http://www.fastmail.fm/users/jhoward/spamcop.html
Without starting a discussion on the detailed contents of that page, I
at least agree with you to the extent that one should not block mail
on the basis of the spamcop list alone.
However, it's useful to block on the basis of a site being listed in
both Spamcop and one or more[1] of the technical open relay/proxy
blacklists, even if you wouldn't block on the basis of one or other
alone. This is a pretty good indication that a site is not only
capable of being misused as a spam relay, but is in fact being used as
such.
[1] your choice, really, from (subsets of) relays.monkeys,com,
relays.ordb.org, relays.osirusoft.com, maybe dynablock.wirehub.net
etc.
This of course is meant in addition to any blacklists you might be
using as complete blocks (such as indeed MAPS if you subscribe to it).
> For real spam-protection, you should use a tool like
> SpamAssassin/bogofilter/razor. These tools analyze the message itself,
> not only the server where the mail came from.
Content-based filters can be useful for a great deal of stuff, indeed,
but increasingly some spammers are evidently learning how to disguise
their content so that content-based filters rate it as harmless normal
mail.
