Nothing personal, but you could hardly ask for a better illustration. For one thing, this isn't a case of broken DNSBLs, it's a case of getting what you asked for. Rather than using shared DNSBLs, this tiny host on a non-profit public access network is desperately trying to run its own spam filters. Maybe you sent him blowback from spam with forged addresses, maybe he just mistyped someone else's address. Whatever it was, in the absence of shared DNSBLs, the option isn't no filtering, it's a million local filters on a million mail hosts with millions of mistakes that can only be corrected one by one. At least this one was competent enough to let you know that he'd rejected your mail. A lot of the million mail admins aren't. For another, "I'm too important to block" is not a winning long term response. We're all important in some areas and unimportant in others. Spam sucks, spam filtering sucks, DNSBLs suck, but in a world where >95% of all mail is spam, not filtering spam sucks way more, and it even sucks way more than filtering with occasional mistakes. If, rather than trying to do his own filtering, this guy used some of the popular reliable DNSBLs (none of which list 69.25.196.31) both he and you would have avoided this screwup. Much though we might wish otherwise, spam and spam filtering aren't going away, and by their nature, spam filters make errors. Anyone who claims otherwise is way, way, out of touch. Some of us would rather try to figure out ways to improve the delivery of real mail and minimize the errors than rant about it. R's, John > herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data: > host rhun.apana.org.au [64.62.148.172]: 451-sender IP address >69.25.196.31 is locally blacklisted here. If you think > 451 this is wrong, please call +61289874478. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf