On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Nicholas Staff wrote: > Dean, > > I couldn't agree with you more - thanks for saying it. You're welcome. > whats funny to me is if anything would have given spammers a reason to > exploit open relays it would have been the blacklists. No, this isn't the case, and ironically, it is anti-spammers that usually made this assertion. It isn't the case because intelligent spam-blocking requires that the headers and message content be analyzed, ala spamassasin and other tools. Years ago, the unreasonable spamops folks insisted on trying to block spam without receiving it: That is, to send a "550 no spam accepted" type message before the SMTP DATA command. This kind of blocking is not reasonable, since use of a relay, any relay (open or closed), defeats the blocking scheme. The often asserted goal of "saving resources" is not valid because it is faster to queue the message and analyze it afterwards than it is to hold up the mail process trying to decide whether to reject it before receipt. By contrast, intelligent analysis of the message headers and content can block the message from a blocked host no matter what relays they used. (open, closed, authenticated, or unauthenticated). And this is what one wants. You should probably read http://www.av8.net/FTC.pdf, which details the many fallacies promoted by anti-spammers about open relays. -- Av8 Internet Prepared to pay a premium for better service? www.av8.net faster, more reliable, better service 617 344 9000 _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf