[SpamCop-List] Re: Backscatter

[Peter Gradwell]

Mike Easter wrote:
> Almost all of that you are describing is going to 'known' bogus
> addresses.  It is /known/ that spam and virus propagations all come from
> bogus Froms.  Configuring a server to create or manufacture newmails to
> 'known' bogus addresses is a stupid, and more imporantly, a stupidly
> *abusive* configuration, abusive to the forged From recipients.

/but/ there is no perfect way to work out which email addresses people 
use to send me email are bogus, apart from reading all the email by hand.

If I use a good spam filtering tool to identify all the mail that it 
thinks is junk, and I bin all that email, I will still receive more spam 
email than I would like.

So, I may also deploy a whitelist and an intelligent Challenge-Response 
system to do a final filter for me.

If I do that, I will still get listed in spamcop, because spamcop only 
deals in black & white, not the many required shades of grey.

That would be ok, if people who have started to use the many tools which 
all use spamcop (because it is a good spam list) understood that now 
they should give less credibility to spamcop (because now it contains a 
large number of non-spamming ips).

However, that message has not yet got out to everyone concerned.

I would not want people to find out that spamcop is now ineffective. It 
would be much better if spamcop adapted to the current state of affairs 
and categorised backscatter hosts seperately, so people can be more 
intelligent in their use of the various recommendations that spamcop 
makes to them.

I understand that we have different views on the evilness of back 
scatter. I'd like you to understand that you need to be more explicit in 
the (automated) recommendations that spamcop provides to spam filtering 
tools - in order to remain useful.

HTH HAND

peter

-- 
peter gradwell. gradwell dot com Ltd. http://www.gradwell.com/
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