RE: [Exim] BACKUP smart host?

On Tue, 18 May 2004, Mike 'Fraz' White wrote:

> The ISP who I used to work on their abuse team for, specifically allow
> residential customers to run mail servers (subject to conditions) in
> their User Policy.

And how are we, as potential recipients of their mail offerings,
supposed to be able to distinguish those select few from the vast
number of unmaintained systems which approach us, whose DNS records
lead us to believe, on the balance of probabilities, that they are
likely trying to relay viruses, spam or other nuisances to us, and
which we'll therefore either reject out of hand; or toss a handful of
spamassassin points into the bucket and probably end up rejecting them
on the accumulation of other spam-suspect increments; riddle me that?

I'd say that the answer, within what's currently available, is that
they get themselves a nice matching set of DNS records to fit their
email domain name.

> The number of complaints received about such customers were
> negligible

That's all well and good, from *their* point of view, but how are we
(who have no contractual relationship with them, and know nothing
about them beyond what we can discern in the DNS and in public RBLs)
supposed to know that they belong to the select band of folks who are
capable of running their own mailer? If they walk like a duck, and
quack like a duck, I'm afraid on the balance of probabilities they
shouldn't be surprised to be treated like one by their potential
recipients.

best regards