Spam and extra MX records

[Bill McGonigle]

On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:20, Ben Scott wrote:

>   Personally, I also find these kinds of strategies very rude.  You're
> increasing *my* mail server's load because *you're* not willing to
> implement a proper anti-spam solution.  Don't be a jerk about your
> mail system.  That makes you part of the problem -- not much better
> than the spammers.

How about if we're both increasing each others' mail server loads in  
an effort to combat spam?  At what level is that worthwhile?  When I  
first turned on greylisting I saw about a 60% drop on false-negatives  
everywhere.  Now it's down to about 40%.  If you're seeing 10 spams a  
day, seeing 4 the next day is rather impressive.  Personally I was of  
the opinion that I'd be happy for my mail server to queue for a few  
more minutes if I'm helping you out in a major way.

>   Mostly, though, I'm against these kinds of things because they are a
> doomed strategy.  If enough people start doing it, the spammers *will*
> adapt.  They've already started doing so for greylisting-- modern
> botnets follow proper SMTP retry protocol, or so I've read.


Doesn't that pretty much define every anti-spam technique short of  
per-sender whitelisting?  WTTW: they still haven't figured out to  
generate proper hostnames in SMTP introductions...postfix has a rule  
to check this.

-Bill

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