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Wednesday, January 9, 2002

Bring it On, Spamsters

A change in some of the software I use on a daily basis (can't say what, yet) has made it incredibly easy for me to report Unsolicited Bulk Email (spam) to SpamCop.

Really easy. One mouse click easy.

I love SpamCop. It was always easy to use, especially for techies. Just paste in the full text of the email, including the headers, and submit it. The software would do the work of figuring out which postmaster and abuse addresses should receive the notifications, and then send them for you.

One-click reporting is even better. :-)

On the Other Hand, there's ORBZ and the ORDB

As long as I'm on the subject of spam-fighting services, I'll point out that I really hate ORBZ and the other "black hole" services that use "Open Relay Databases". They block all of the email from entire domains simply because it's possible to use those domains' mail servers to send spam. They don't even require evidence that spam has actually been sent through them... it just has to be possible. Overkill! Macrobyte's been blocked by them a couple of times, because our mail server (EIMS) is very difficult to fully protect. Fail one of their tests, and they'll drop you into the hole immediately.

Lots of people like these sorts of services because they think it cuts down on the amount of spam. It doesn't, because the spammers just find other ways to send their mail. These "services" do a great job of preventing legitimate email from getting through, though, because they block all email from a domain. (If you send mail from a domain listed by ORBZ to someone at xyz.com, and xyz.com's mail server uses the ORBZ service, your mail won't get through.)


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From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. - WC