On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Alan J. Flavell wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Margrit Lottmann wrote:
>
> > He wrote that spews.relays.osirusoft.com is an unserious
> > rbl checker ????
By the way, I see that you specifically mentioned Osirusoft, and I
haven't seen anyone else comment on this yet, so (at risk of seeming
pedantic), the "Herr Diplom-Skeptiker" (as I was once called at the
MPI) feels it necessary to add this much.
Osirusoft do not directly control the Spews data: AIUI they do no more
than to provide a DNS-based RBL using the data provided by Spews.
The Spews itself is at the web site
http://spews.org
But if you intend to use Spews as a blocking list then you (and your
management, and your users) need to understand the consequences, and
to support the resulting actions. No-one has an unalienable right to
deposit mail in your server.
Our action list is something like this:
1. our rejection includes an invitation to contact the postmaster
address (except in the worst of cases, where we won't even accept SMTP
calls from the offenders)
2. the postmaster address is not blocked (except in the worst of
cases, where we won't even accept SMTP calls from the offenders) (and
anyone who is dumb enough to spam the postmaster address goes straight
into the blocking list without appeal, of course)
3. If a complainant contacts the postmaster with a sob story, then we
check with the intended recipient whether they wanted mail from this
source
a) if not, then too bad
b) if so, then we whitelist the sender.
On the whole, this strategy works. It sometimes causes awkwardness
with mailing lists to which the recipient has consented, when a
blacklisted spammer distributes mail to the list.
cheers
