Jari Fredriksson wrote:
>
>> I just wanted to come up with
>> something that blocked spam
>> at the protocol level (so the spammer gets an error!!!),
>
> That's all great.. but the reality may be that the spammer still get no
> error.
>
> ...
>
Hmmmm... Well, yes and no :-) Now, it is probably correct to say the actual
spammer him/her self does not get the errors, but what is VERY interesting
is the DRASTIC reduction in
the actual amount of spam received (and blocked) over time.
For instance, I went back and looked at some early statistics from when we
first started running our spam
blocker (about 7 months ago). During the first week, we blocked around
25,000 spam email messages
directed at one domain (the Town's domain ). For one recipient in
particular (the Town clerk), the blocker
stopped 4814 messages in one week.
I went back and ran the blocking statistics for this past week. Down from
the original 25,000 in a week,
to under 14,000. The Town Clerk is down from 4184 blocked messages in one
week to 588 (a reduction to
almost 1/10th the original value). None of the messages received in the
clerk's email box since 29-Feb
(which is as far back as I looked) were spam, which is kind of interesting.
I figured at least one or two
would get through in that amount of time.
I have consistantly noticed this with my other sites as well. The amount of
spam messages directed at
the domains drop quite a bit over time.
Now, I'm no expert on spam-bots, but it strikes me that the 'bots might want
to remove failed addresses
from their lists to make them more efficient. A 550 error returned at the
protocol level will immediately
notify the 'bot that the addressee is bad. Whether the 'bot then removes
the addressee from the list
is a matter of implmentation, but if the reduction in spam directed at the
Town that we have seen is any
indication, the 'bots might just function in this manner (or at least some
of them).
Don'tchya just hate spam? I have a friend who works in MIS at a large
hospital. They have one of the
more expensive spam solutions (which supposedly cost them some $50,000 - and
then there's an
ongoing fee), ***and*** they have a full-time sysadmin on staff to
administrate the machine and the
associated software. So, what are they spending on spam *per year*-
something like $100,000 or
probably MORE????!!!
Gives us something to do, I guess, but I can think of better uses of time
:-) :-) :-)
Regards,
Steve
--
View this message in context:
http://www.nabble.com/Yet-another-spam-blocker--tp15911630p15923463.html
Sent from the SpamAssassin - Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
