Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 13:04:47 +0530 From: Devdas Bhagat <devdas@worldgatein.net> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [OT] ISP anti-spam Message-ID: <20020704130447.F9440@rivendell.worldgatein.net> In-Reply-To: <200207040113.g641DFL87663@tierzero.apana.org.au>; from bastill@sa.apana.org.au on Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 10:48:26AM %2B0930 References: <200207040113.g641DFL87663@tierzero.apana.org.au>
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On 04/07/02 10:48 +0930, Brian Astill wrote: > There seems to be a movement among ISPs to "help" us by applying spamassasin > (or similar) to all mail they handle - IN or OUT. > Is this an invasion of privacy? If they state this in their terms of service, I guess they are letting you know about it. Plus, you should be encrypting most of your mail anyway. > Is such behaviour dangerous, in suggesting to political control freaks that > Internet Control is possible and desirable? Hmmm, think of it this way: We are trying to rein in the anti-social elements. Is it better to get rid of spammers via social engineering means, or via legislation banning spamming? I prefer the first, the second lets the Internet be regulated in potentially nasty ways, by even more clueless people. If your ISP admin is clueless, OTOH, then you have big problems. > Would it be MUCH better for all users to be encouraged to use spam filters, > if they wish? If we had clued up users, yes. But rejecting spam at the gateway (even before it hits spamassassain) is much cheaper. We routinely reject 50-60% of inbound mail, and I get about 5 to 7 false positives in a week. It saves some amount of bandwidth for us, plus reduces load on the mail server. Also, 95% of users tend to leave mail on the mail server (even when we provide pop access, they find webmail easier). So this saves disk space as well. And customer support requests here have dropped wrt spam in their inbox (people don't just apply filters even when given that option, they ask us to block senders). > What do people think on these and related issues? Hey, if you want all your spam, get your own domain and tell your ISP not to filter for your domain. (wishing that my parents ISP would put up some spam blocks and spamassassain instead of putting up an antivirus -- Linux isn't much affected by viruses, but spam is a DoS on the mailbox). Devdas Bhagat To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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