Re: UDP/DNS in Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@fencepost.gnu.org>]

> From: Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>
> Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 14:34:51 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > My point is that basing this on the sender's ISP is a bad idea, one
> > that unduly discriminates people who don't have much choice but to use
> > whatever ISPs are available to them.  
> 
> It is their problem.  Why should I suffer for it?

Because it will become your problem when relevant mail is
automatically junked based on the domain from which it comes.

> If Gnus can improve my blacklist rules, I will have to spend less time
> skimming the misc.misc folder, and junk less messages by accident.

If I understand your habits, it also means that some non-junk mail
will be read once a month instead of once a day.

It strikes me that a second or two it takes to recognize spam and
press that DELETE button is a much more efficient means (both
time-wise and as far as danger of junking real email is considered) of
dealing with mail than your convoluted procedure.  IMHO, of course.

> I do not see why "fairness" to people who believe they have no other
> choise than using an incompetent ISP should force me to lose relevant
> mail.

I think your assumption about availablility of good ISPs needs some
reality check.  How well are you familiar with the situation outside
Western Europe and North America?

For that matter, it's possible that your mail handling needs to be
revised, and that some different procedure will run less risk of
junking relevant mail even without draconian measures.

> ORBS is dead, and was in any case a database of current open relays.
> To get out of the database, all you had to close it.

I know all about this; do you?  How many times, if at all, did you
need or try to deal with these problems?

The number of times I removed my ISP from the data base is greater
than the number of words in this message.  It doesn't help: a few days
after that, it's in the data base again.

> Open relayes was
> (and probably still is) the most efficient way for spammers to
> propagate their messages, and blocking based on open relays was (and
> probably still is) the most efficient way to block spam.

As usual, this is a question of striking the fine balance of stopping
the guilty without unduly punishing the innocent.  It might be worth
remembering that spam is defined based on its content, not on the
server from which it comes.