Marc Perkel wrote:
I'm thinking about starting a service to filter spam on outgoing email.
I was wondering if anyone has any experience doing this
yes
and has some
advice on how to do it.
yes. Don't do it.
These customers will be businesses, not freemail
customers, and one of the only real threats is if someone gets hacked or
has some kind of web form that gets abused.
The advantages for customers would be that many of them have dynamic IPs
If they have dynamic IP's they are supposed to be relaying mail through
whatever e-mail server is authoritative for their domain, per the SPF
record for the domain name they are using.
or static IP names that look dynamic
Any decent ISP that assigns static IP numbers has a means to apply
non-dynamic-looking PTR records to those IP addresses.
and are worried about being
blacklisted. And I'm hoping that by tracking who they send email to that
I can match up replies and white list them.
Does this sound like a good idea?
If it makes money and it's legal it's a good idea. However your only
going to make money if you can build a book of business consisting of
very -dumb- businesses.
I'd like to hear from someone who is
doing this or people who have ideas about it.
Here's the problem. Businesses consist of collections of "dumb users"
(I don't mean dumb as in low-IQ, I mean dumb as in ignorant, there's a
big difference)
dumb users universally want mail they RECEIVE to be spam-filtered.
However, they also universally object to their OWN mail being
spamfiltered. "Hey, I'm not a spammer" the thinking goes "It's
the OTHER GUY who is the spammer, go pick on him"
The logic is exactly the same as what cities use to get mass-transit
expansion projects passed in a vote. The benefits of increased bussing
are extolled as reducing congestion on the highway. The average
dumb voter, of course, think that this means that every OTHER guy
out on the highway is going to voluntarily get on the bus to
make the highway less congested for ME. Once the cities pull the pants
down on the voters and get the transit projects funded, the voter
eventually sees no decrease in congestion, and the number of transit
riders merely remains at the exact same percentage of commuting
population as before - the only difference is an increase in
convenience for those riders who were using mass transit in the first
place (since the busses are less congested, more frequent, etc.)
Anyway, getting back to spam filtering, ultimately it makes no real
difference if the average dumb user who injects HTML flowers,
winki-winkies, and other crapola into their e-mails to the point
that those mails get identified as spam, gets filtered at THEIR
mailserver, the sending server, or at the RECIPIENT mailserver.
Both mailservers are gonna be spam-filtered, both will use similar
rulessets, and both will identify the graphics-laden, fancy-font
HTMLized mail as spam. If the senders message is too "spammy" it's
going to be blocked at either one - and the sender will find out about
it when they follow up by telephone with the recipient.
And when they do, the dumb users UNIVERSALLY are pissed off - and
looking for blood. If your the hapless admin who happen to be
employed by that dumb users company, your going to find your spam
filtering rammed up your ass so far you will be spitting out
hair tonic baldness cures.
It is so much nicer when your users come screaming to you, with
the ropes and pitchforks, to sweetly explain to them that no, YOU
didn't filter their crappy, graphics and html-laden with winki winki
smilies, fonts and background gifs of their puppy, e-mails, it was
that rat-bastard admin of their RECIPIENT who filtered them.
Then, they must put away the ropes and pitchforks and moderate
their screaming when they inform their corespondent that their
corespondent's admin blocked them.
And so, at least 1/2 the time their corespondent's admin WILL NOT
lift a finger to loosen their restrictions, with the end result
that your filtered user can come to you with his hat in his hand,
whereby you can turn OFF his ability to send htmlized mail, and inform
him that nobody likes HTMLized mail with winki winki crap in it.
He won't believe you, of course, since the average dumb users capacity
to believe that the whole world wants to see their clever emoticon
winki-winki, special background font email is infinite - but since that
will be the only way they will be able to actually get an e-mail to
their corespondent, they will reluctantly adhere to it.
Thanks in advance for your advice.
No problem - of course, I know you won't take it.
Ted
