[Techtalk] Over-zealous spam filtering (by Raven's ISP?)

[Carla Schroder]

On Saturday 21 September 2002 09:24 am, Raquel Rice wrote:
> Why all the fuss over one small-time (sorry, Raven.  No offense
> intended) mail server?  If the mail was DISCARDed rather than
> REJECTed, you would never have known.  I don't answer the door when
> Jehovah Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists or sales people come
> knocking.  I try not to allow the same thing to happen with my
> email.  Why all the fuss?  Is it worth upsetting everyone's
> (including yourself) day over?

Hello Raquel,

After reading James' and Jenn's posts, I agree there is a problem.  It 
affects not only the people served by Raven's ISP, but legitimate senders 
like James. James tried to email a colleague, and received a rather 
attention-getting bounce and reply. If he wants to be able to email Raven, he 
has to first write a paper letter in the hopes of getting approval. 

Now that's a lot of hoops to jump through. Real spammers don't have 
legitimate return addresses, so the 'shit-list' comment is likely going to be 
seen only by senders of legitimate emails. In other words, the good guys, as 
usual, get punished for the actions of the bad guys.

In the bigger picture, there are several maintainers of blacklists who have 
the same ISP-wide zero-tolerance policy. This affects a lot of Internet 
users. They have the same attitude- if spamcop.net allows one spammer, then 
by gosh all of their traffic is evil. This is not realistic- ISPs do not have 
instant control! They even use the same argument- blocking an entire ISP will 
cause irate customers to rise up in fury and force the ISP to destroy the 
evil spammers that infest their ranks.

This is not realistic, or fair. Some ISPs are spam havens, and should be 
blocked. But no one can possibly prevent a customer from launching that first 
spam attack, all they can do is react. 

Raven's policies are her business, just throwing in my .02. 

cheers,
Carla

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Carla Schroder, Bratgrrl Computing
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