--On Sunday, June 22, 2003 6:31 PM -0500 Bob Apthorpe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
On 21 Jun 2003 19:21:12 +0100 Yorkshire Dave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 08:58, Alan Leghart wrote:
> This method proposes to delay EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE until a database > match is found for sending IP, FROM, and TO. > > So...we punish everyone in the world, and hope that a delay of one or > more hours is considered "acceptable"?
I agree, applied globally this is too much of a broad brush, it assumes every host is a spammer and waits for them to prove otherwise with a re-send. Guilty until proven innocent
Might I politely suggest that people please read the original paper before engaging in any shrill handwringing:
I read it. Supports my assertion that all senders are delayed until a specific "triplet" is recorded in a database. Changing any one part causes the delay again.
<snip>
<snip>"One additional feature which has not yet been mentioned is the provision for some method to allow manual whitelisting of relays, recipients, and possibly even senders.
So, now we have to maintain a whitelist database manually? So far, subscribing to 3rd-party blacklists has minimized the fine-tuning necessary by an admin. If I have to make manual entries into a whitelist database for every business and personal contact, why do we need blacklists? Run everything off a white-list, screw the "grey"list, and hire a data-entry clerk with two phone lines.
In Alan's pathological example, one has to question a) why there's no communication between sales rep and sysadmin staff to allow rapid whitelisting of clients,
Email communication should work without "rapid whitelisting". How many times does your receptionist have to unlock the front door to let in customers?
b) why any business would be so incompetently managed as to put such critical reliance on such an unreliable medium as email[1] (don't these people have phones?), and
We aren't a newspaper. We don't have typists sitting at the ready to take down four or twenty pages worth of copy dictated from a payphone. Those days are over. New copy is provided via email. And as far as "unreliable medium"....greylisting's arbitrary rejections (you cannot dispute that they are arbitrary) cause delays and rejections which make the system even more unreliable. How are you helping the medium? And please, belay your analysis of competence in management. It is completely unnecessary to insult blindly. Phones were once considered unreliable (especially with time differences and availability). Proper business was conducted via mail. Email is considered the electronic parallel.
c) if despite all good sense the timeliness of email was considered critical to business, why you'd implement greylisting with the default 1 hour delay rather than dropping it to 5 minutes (or why you'd use it at all.) But this is a chosen pathological example and the problems mentioned are less a function of greylisting as they are of bad management. In this case, the damage is less severe than that from refusing mail from blacklisted servers or silently dropping mail falsely flagged by SA and the method gracefully handles mailing list traffic unlike most C/R systems. The worst outcome from greylisting is an increased bandwidth requirement on innocents and an adjustably small delay on initial mailings. This is all described in the original paper.
The major complaint of spam is that you are forcing something upon innocent people, increasing bandwidth unnecessarily, and are contributing to the noise and increased costs of providing bandwidth. Ummm...or is that the complaint I have about greylisting. Sounds the same to me.
Again, insults are inappropriate. If you wish to debate, leave the childish remarks on the playground. You have the gall to throw trash and expect arguments to be taken seriously?
<snip>
And yes, that's me listed way at the bottom of the credits section for initial peer review. I'm still concerned about the additional bandwidth consumed by widespread greylisting but the method forces spam sources to act like real MTAs and the only false positives found so far have been due to badly broken MTAs (those that ignore 45x temporary failure response codes.)
Please follow up on [greylist-users] - see http://lists.puremagic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/greylist-users for subscription info.
-- Bob
[1] Especially for moving graphics around. I worked in publishing and as of 1995 we routinely trucked image files back and forth via FTP. Anything really big involved mailing disks around (not CD-ROMs, SCSI drives...)
You are right. For large files an FTP is more appropriate. For a 32k Word file, it is overkill. Especially when you have to distribute server addresses, login names, passwords, and general instructions. I've had more support calls for FTP, firewall, client, file-name issues than for email use.
Email blacklists get me 1-2 calls per month. Greylists would get me calls _daily_, I fear.
I applaud your concern for the internet as a whole. The effort put forth on this project is commendable. The methodology, I fear, is not fully plotted.
If you are one of the proponents, your attitude does nothing to help your cause. Insults make you look like a child on the playground. You shouldn't _fight_ for your cause. Educate or debate. Flames get you nowhere.
Best of luck with your endeavor.
- Alan
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