Re: Why spam blacklisting isn't going to work anymore ...

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

mouse () rodents-montreal org (der Mouse) writes:

> > i agree for a reason not mentioned yet.  blackholing by source IP
> > hasn't worked for years
>
> Works for me.  Indeed, one of today's better tools (Spamhaus's Zen
> list) works exactly that way.
>
> > since so much spam is mixed in with non-spam from addresses like the
> > gmail and hotmail and aol servers which for business reasons noone is
> > comfortable blackholing.  the spammers won this round in 2002 or so.
>
> Only for people who are willing to let them human-shields their way out
> of the consequences of their antisocial behaviour.
>
> Such people deserve all the spam consequences of such willingness.

all wars are about economics.  the reason your personal experiences don't
qualify as a win whereas the spammers' experiences do, is that you're
losing more money and opportunity than either them or their human shields,
and they make money from what they do in spite of your actions and
experiences.  forcefully opting out may indeed be the path of enlightened
self interest and it may also be that if everybody were thusly enlightened
that the spammers and their enablers would notice somehow.  but from the
hills above all this, it's clear that the war was lost in 2002 or so.

> > also, the absence of a PTR RR or its presence having a specific
> > pattern is a better input to the filter than the recent reputation of
> > the ip address.
>
> "X is better than Y" is not a reason to avoid using Y, not unless for
> some reason you can't do both.  (Which may indeed be so for some
> people, for example if you don't have the staff time to maintain both.)

true enough, i was oversimplifying there.
-- 
Paul Vixie
KI6YSY
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