[[ WARNING: note and honour my reply-to address!!! ]]
[ On Friday, April 11, 2003 at 11:53:09 (+0200), Nico Erfurth wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: [SpamCop (195.70.42.158) id:201945753]Re: [Exim] Tricky configuration] (fwd)
>
> Tony Earnshaw wrote:
>
> > Thanks to Tabor, Nigel and Richard for their explanations. What I'd
> > heard about Spamcop was to avoid it; Richard's explanation shows why.
>
> also check this link:
> http://jhoward.fastmail.fm/spamcop.html
Idiots will be idiots and the ignorant rule. :-)
We can see for certain, from the above URL for example, that Jeremy
Howard would rather spread rumour and innuendo than factual information,
and as you can see he does it with great flair and he works hard to try
to give it the impression that he is only giving the facts yet somehow
they don't hold together very well.
The so-called "explanations" that were posted to this list were not very
factual and seemed to have a political agenda as well.
Anyone interested in learning the facts should investigate the database
in question _directly_, as well as its published documentation, rather
than read such opinion pieces and take them as gospel.
Anyone truly interested in the facts, and only the facts, about SpamCop
will soon learn that it's an information collecting and reporting system
and that it doesn't directly block any mail whatsoever. As far as I can
tell there's not even any claim that the SpamCop database contains only
examples of spam/UCE (though I have never personally found any counter-
examples in my own investigations, and have only heard allegations from
others of such examples).
The fact that people find it so important to fight very hard against
SpamCop suggests that they have a political agenda rather than technical
argument with its operation. The fact that they can't find any truly
convincing technical arguments whatsoever to back up their complaints
only proves the point. (Yes I've read everything I can find that all
the detractors have had to say about SpamCop and I can't find any
convincing technical arguments whatsoever -- in fact most of what the
detractors say only convinces me of the effectiveness of SpamCop as a
collecting and reporting system.)
Note that nobody is suggesting that the SpamCop database be used to
actively block any e-mail.
If indeed so many people are in fact using SpamCop's "blacklist" to
actively block e-mail from spam/UCE sources then that only suggests to
me that doing so is not actually causing any harm to the recipients
affected, and/or that postmasters are desparate enough to stop spam/UCE
that they are willing to put up with a tiny fraction of complaints about
the blocked e-mail vs. the enormous volume of complaints they get about
spam/UCE.
(I do happily use bl.spamcop.net on my home systems, but so far I've not
ever used it on any commercial systems.)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098; <g.a.woods@???>; <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
