[SC-Help] Re: Curious

[John E. Malmberg]

Steve Grosz wrote:
> I'm curious, what good does reporting the spam to SpamCop actually do? 
> Is there a RBL list that can be added to my email server that will help me?

MAPS is claiming trademark on RBL, so the generic term has become DNSbl.

There is a bl.spamcop.net, but it may be too aggressive for use on a 
production mailserver.  It is more useful in a scoring system.
A spamcop.net listing is a high probability of spam, but not absolute.

Also, once a spam source makes it on to the more conservative DNSbls, 
many spamcop.net reporters never see any more spam from that source to 
report it, which may cause it to drop off of the spamcop.net list.

As you have not specified what you are currently using, there is no way 
to advise you on what else is available.

There are well over 200 dnsbls out there, some with strict criteria, and 
others that are slowly listing the entire internet, including anyone 
that sends them an e-mail asking about their particular DNSbl.

In general people have reported that with a selected set of conservative 
DNSbls, they can get from 80 to 95% spam rejection with pretty much no 
false positives.

And by checking suspicious e-mail from I.P.s on aggressive lists, or 
with defective rdns, for links that either do not resolve, or resolve to 
I.P. addresses that are in the conservative DNSbls, reports are that 
close to 100% of spam can be rejected with out impacting real e-mail.

Currently SpamAssassin 3.x as a Milter seems to be the only content 
filter that can perform the URL lookup test.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only