On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 04:39:53PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> [ On Tuesday, January 29, 2002 at 15:47:12 (-0500), Shannon wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: OT: orbz.org - help needed
> >
> > I seek 100% accuracy knowing I cannot get it. Using Orbz in the past
> > blocked an inordinate amount of email I needed to get. That's the only
> > reason I said that about accuracy. You've read far too much into this.
> 
> I think you still don't clearly have the distinction made about who is
> blocking what.....
> 
> No DNS "black-list" blocks anything whatsoever at all.  _YOU_ do the
> blocking _IFF_ you use the lists in that way.

Huh? I never said they did... we were talking about filtering spam, I
thought, and I mentioned that I had trouble with blacklists (meaning the
data, not the produce of the data) blocking legitimate email.

Of course, having said that, if my ISP or someone they depended on
blocked email with a blacklist, I would have no control over that. My
ISP and one I worked for don't use blacklists because too many customers
complained, and maintaining whitelists proved too resource hungry. I
think the one I worked for started marking headers instead of blocking
the mail, but I don't remember now.
 
> > They don't choose. They use the only ISP available to them in most
> > cases. Same for me. If mine ran an open relay, about all I could do
> > would be report them and hope that convinced them to fix things.
> 
> That's simply not true at all, especially not in this day and age when
> even the most lame of MUAs available to the average person is capable of
> doing SMTP AUTH.  

I'm lost... what does this have to do with their provider running an
open relay and being able to get them to fix it?

> Nobody is ever forced to use their connectivity provider as their
> e-mail provider. If your friends are under this impression then you
> should try to inform them of the many alternatives they have. Perhaps
> you yourself could offer them secure and safe e-mail services! :-)

In my universe people have limitations like cost, knowledge, time, ISP
restrictions, and other circumstance.  

> > The problem though is that some major sites still run open relays and
> > refuse to fix them. Many of them even claim that they cannot run without
> > them being open. A lot of this is due to them using some Windows server
> > software that is broken by design.
> 
> Don't use their services then.  Don't let your friends use them either.

Well, now you are making suggestions that are beyond me too. Sometimes
I'd like to have that power, but I don't... :)

> > I got a spamcop account to see how well it works. Mail from my upstream
> > hosts is forwarded there, and I fetch mail from there instead to my
> > local LAN.
> 
> I use the DNS list at bl.spamcop.net.  It is very effective. 

I never could get that to work on my dialup account. It was fine at a
job site where I tried it, but so far no luck at home on my LAN.

For the time being, forwarding mail to spamcop works, but I hate the
wasted bandwidth. 

At least they do send back a reply telling the sender their mail was
blocked. That way if they are a real person, they can quickly resubmit
their email and it will go through. That, and it notifies them of the
problem. So even though I might not know something good was blocked, the
sender should.

-- 
shannon@widomaker.com  _________________________________________________
______________________/ armchairrocketscientistgraffitiexenstentialist
 "And in billows of might swell the Saxons before her,-- Unite, oh
 unite!  Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall of the Gael