Re: tlug: Spam filter (desperately) want

[Jonathan Byrne <j-byrne@example.com>]

Tod McQuillin (devin@example.com) wrote:

> I recommend SpamCop, at www.spamcop.net.  Not only will they filter your
> mail for you, but you can report the spam you do get to the ISPs
> responsible.

Absolutely not.

Speaking as an ISP employee and a person who is often on the receiving
end of misdirected, misguided, and just plain stupid SpamCop spew, it's
the last thing I want to see anyone involved with.  It's so bad
that I sometimes use a procmail filter to devnull anything sent
by SpamCop, because never once have we received from SpamCop
anything that actually came from here or had anything at all
to do with this network.

SpamCop seems to spam the administrators of any domain which
appears anywhere in the mail, regardless of whether or not they
had anything to do with it.  Your domain name was forged on the 
From: header or in the (always bogus) remove instructions?  Tough.
You still deserve a spam from SpamCop (which, I suppose is why they
call it that; because it spams innocent sysdadmins).

Plus, those complaint letters are totally useless and nothing but an
annoyance for the recipients.  They will not put anyone on your
side.  Abuse departments want to see one thing and one thing only:
the spam, with the full headers displayed.  No commentary.  No
form letters.  Just the spam.  And only if that spam actually
came from one of their users, came from or passed through their network,
or references a domain within their network. If it didn't, 
you basically have no business sending it to them and will only annoy
them.  Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know what they are
talking about.

If you want to use a pop proxy based spam filter, Brightmail does
a great job, and doesn't annoy people like spam(producing)cop does.
That is a good thing.  However, both of them require you to send
your password across the Internet from their POP proxy to your
ISPs actual POP server.  This is insecure.   Your call as to whether
you want to do that.  I don't.

There are many tools that will filter spam.  Procmail works.
Brightmail works. SpamCop doubtless does, too.  I'm sure there
are others.  But if you want to report spam, there is still
no substitute for doing it yourself.  The kinds of things that
SpamCop enables the clueless masses to do to innocent ISP
sysadmins are unconscionable.

The opinions expressed herein are solely my own and do
not represent the views of my employer, TLUG, or anyone else.

Jonathan
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