Re: Have all the Email systems of the world been broken by ISP's SPAM filters?

From: Vanguard (see_signature)
Date: 01/02/05 

Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 00:41:27 -0600

"BeamGuy" <nobody@spam.com> wrote in message
news:egzb$jH8EHA.2552@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>I am sitting here in this new year trying to figure out how on earth I
>am supposed to send email to my in-laws this year. Their
> email stopped working a few weeks back when their ISP installed a new
> SPAM filter. Now it is fixed... but only 2/5 of my test
> messages get through.
>
> Searching Google I find that they are not alone. There are not only
> ample complaints about their own tiny ISP.
>
> And their ISP is not alone either. Several months back a friend had to
> give up sending mail to my home DSL account because her
> messages were bouncing... - Google has huge numbers of complaints
> about my own Verizon DSL provider as well.
>
> Here is my matrix of what does not work.
>
> Verizon.net CANNOT send mail to worldkey.net
> axcelis.com CANNOT send mail to worldkey.net
> princeton.edu CANNOT send mail to worldkey.net
> netzero.com CAN send mail to worldkey.net
> samus.securehbs.com CAN send mail to worldkey.net
>
> worldkey.net CANNOT send mail to verizon.net
> worldkey.net CAN send mail to samus.securehbs.com
> worldkey.net CAN send mail to princeton.edu
> worldkey.net CAN send mail to netzero.net
> worldkey.net CAN send mail to axcelis.com
>
> comcast.net sometimes CANNOT send mail to verizon.net
> verizon.net CAN send mail to comcast.net
>
> samus.securehbs.com CANNOT send mail to godaddy.com for forwarding
> either... In this case they were nice
> enough to send back this response:
> "smtp.secureserver.net [64.202.166.12]: 553 69.93.45.234 rejected due
> to spam, contact 480-505-8877 (Attack detected)"
>
>
> -------------
>
> It is not my job to fill in the rest of the matrix. It looks like as
> many as 50% of the relays
> from one mail to another mail server are broken! Please tell me this
> is not happening.
> I make a living making parts for computers.... if you guys in the
> interest of security break
> everyone's confidence that email will get through... well everyone
> will switch back to
> paper mail and leave all of us with rusty expensive toys that no one
> uses anymore!
>
>

If you can define server-side rules (i.e., use their webmail interface
to look at options to see if you can define filters or rules on their
server for your mailbox) the you have some options on how to handle your
good e-mails.

Some mail servers let you define server-side rules. One, for example,
is the whitelist any sender that is listed in your address book. The
rule is at the top of the rules list (and stops any further rules
processing) and if the sender is known then no action is taken against
that message (it stays in the inbox) and no more rules are exercised
against that message. You could even make your account exclusive in
that only known senders can send you e-mail. Make your known-sender
rule delete all messages unless the sender is in your address book.
Hotmail lets you do this as an option while other webmail and POP3
accounts can do it with a rule (server- or client-side). I'd rather use
the known-sender rule to stop any further processing of rules (if known,
no more rules need to be exercised). If it gets past that rule, the
subsequent rules do some spam filtering. That way not every sender has
to be a known sender but known senders are guaranteed to get their
e-mails to me.

You could also define a rule that looks for a passcode (aka magic
string) in your good e-mails from known senders. They put the passcode
in the Subject header and your server-side rules detects it, leaves that
message alone (so it stays in the Inbox), and uses a stop-clause or
option to prevent exercising any more rules. You could also define
server-side rules to look for that passcode in the To or Cc header (so
you are looking for it in the Subject, To, or Cc headers). Just tell
the sender to add the passcode to your name in their contact record in
their address book. When they send you an e-mail, the comment portion
of the e-mail address in the To or Cc header will have the passcode and
your server-side rule will catch it. In fact, if you notice my
signature, I use the reverse test: if the sender doesn't put the
passcode in the Subject (or To or Cc) header then a rule checks that it
is missing (but just for that account) and will delete the message. If
it isn't passcoded, I don't get it. Spambots harvest e-mail addresses
and sometimes spammers or a-holes in the newsgroups will unmunge e-mail
addresses and post them for spambots to harvest. But the spambots don't
understand instructions in signatures and the signature isn't included
in the harvested list sent to the spammer so they'll never know to put
the passcode in the headers and it gets deleted upon receipt. I use a
special-use e-mail account for usenet because of this passcode
requirement.

If you have the option of server-side rules, or what they provide really
sucks (I can do the above using Yahoo's rules but Gmail's rules really
suck), and if the ISP's spam filtering is generating way too many false
positives, then disable the ISP's spam filtering and define these rules
as client-side rules (i.e., in your e-mail client). If you disable your
ISP's spam filtering, you'll probably want to include a client-side
anti-spam product, like SpamPal, SpamBayes, or Spamihilator to assist
you in getting rid of spam. Defining a tons of rules in your e-mail
client to eliminate spam is a management nightmare and often not that
effective.

There have been times when my ISP's spam filtering has been too
aggressive and generated too many false positives (good e-mails it
thought were spam). Usually you can configure to immediately delete the
suspect e-mails or to hold them for 1, 2, or 4 weeks after which they
expire and get deleted (so you can catch false positives). If I get any
more false positives from my ISP (more than 1 or 2 per month is too
many), I'll just disable their spam filtering and rely on my own
solutions over which I have far more control. If you don't the spam
filtering behavior provided by your ISP, well, then the obviously
solution is to not use it. Gmail doesn't let you disable spam filtering
(and I've send a trouble report to them to report that defect), so you
might not want to use an ISP who doesn't let you disable their spam
filtering. They gave you protection without choice (i.e., they force
protection down your throat). No thanks. I must be able to
enable/disable spam filtering by the ISP. A good set of server-side
rules or filters is definitely a bonus. An e-mail client with a potent
set of rules is a requirement. OE's and Thunderbird's rule set are the
absolute bare minimum for rule functionality that I will accept,
Outlook's rules set is better, but SpamPal's RegEx is much better (and
can be used in conjuction with the e-mail client's rules). Even if I
can define server-side rules and if I decide to use server-side spam
filtering, I still end up needing client-side rules and anti-spam
solutions. 

-- 
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