The end of e-mail as we know it

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Identification != Spam

I get spam from companies I know with real addresses. Pretty much every company I've ever had cause to send my email address to sends me unsolicitied advertisements.

From my perspective spam = mail I don't won't from identified or unidenfied sources.

Filtering of known spammers (blacklisting) server side seem to fix most of it. Filtering client side according to my preferences (with Mozilla Thunderbird) fixes the rest.

That leaves the spammer who isn't yet known. We put SPF on our domains for this (excluding one where I can't move the DNS yet). So people can match our mail server to our domain. If everyone did the same it would force unknown spammers through filtering (which could then be turned full up without causing lots of false positives) and known domains would pass through to client side filtering.

SIDF adds extra complexity, without any benefit since spam headers are usually fake anyway.

If you can't set a TXT record on your DNS, try EasyDNS.com its dirt cheap and has load balancing, and good backup DNS servers and other plusses.

It's trivial to generate the SPF text record here:
http://spf.pobox.com/wizard.html

Note that by using SPF over Sender ID, you will also work with mail servers that haven't signed a license with Microsoft. by requiring Sender ID you would force mail software companies to sign an open ended changable license with MS.

I recall Sendmail added it as an extra optional module passing the license problems onto others to sort out, which I thought was a poor decision.

Posted by: Nigel Johnstone   Posted on: 03/22/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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