Nudder spam blocking question :-(

[Ben Scott]

On 9/6/06, Steven W. Orr <steveo at syslang.net> wrote:
> This is a new thing for me. I've never heard of an ISP rejecting mail as
> spam from a sender before ...

  The concept is nothing new, but it is getting a lot more
sophisticated.  It used to be your provider would just get abuse
complaints and then cut your feed; now they're doing more in the way
of active monitoring and analysis.

> Also, by reading some of the stuff on comcast's (no wait spamcop's) website, they
> seem to have redefined spam as being Unsolicited Bulk Mail instead of Unsolicited
> Commercial Email.

  There's no official definition of spam (other than the lunch meat).
Some have used UBE, others UCE, others UBE/UCE, others "excessive
multi-posting", others "any message I don't like", etc.

  IMO, the "bulk" part is actually more important than the
"commercial" part.  If someone wants to take the time to craft a
one-of-a-kind, personalized commercial proposal for me, and send it
unsolicited, I'm okay with that.  But I don't want bulk mail, even if
it's just a bunch of dancing hamsters.

> Anyone have experience dealing with designating *outgoing* mail as spam?

  As usual: Contact the operator where the block is occurring and
asking them what's up.

> From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [mailto:mailer-daemon at comcast.net]
>
> The following addresses had delivery problems:
>
> <frambors at syslang.net>
>          Permanent Failure:
> 553_5.3.0_<frambors at syslang.net>..._Spam_blocked_see:_http://spamcop.net/bl.
> shtml?206.18.177.54

  Can we assume you're sure that's not your server emitting the 553
(with Comcast simply reporting it)?

  In any event, that IP address appears to be within Comcast's
network, and is not syslang.net, so perhaps your friend got his IP
address on a SpamCop RBL somehow.  Or maybe he's a DHCP user, and the
previous lease owner for that address did the deed.

-- Ben