[nycbug-talk] OT: Spam Filters

[Miles Nordin]

>>>>> "njt" == N J Thomas <thomas at zaph.org> writes:

   njt> spamd works in tandem with pf (OpenBSD's packet filter) to do
   njt> greylisting, among other things.

the ``other things'' have caused problems for me.  My friend was using
some bogus blacklist, spews i think, and blocking my mail, which is
one of the normal things mail admins need to track down and fix.  It
was hard to do this because instead of returning a proper error as
RFC's demand and many other spam avoidance mechanisms including
greylisting do, the OpenBSD spy-vs-spy attitude throws you in this
``tar pit'' where you are connected to spamd instead of the MTA.
spamd exists only to fuck with you, and is not concerned with reality
nor standards.  The false positives with this setup waste more
sysadmin time than more traditional spam setups I know about,
traditional because they return clear RFC-compliant errors saying,
with varying levels of attitude but all including the key information,
``you were blocked by the MTA at <this> domain because you are on
<this> blacklist, see <this> URL to get off it.''  OpenBSD's failure
to do this makes it a bad neighbor.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 304 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20081023/ff8de059/attachment.bin>