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Why DNSBL exist at all.
What would happen if ... ISPs stopped filtering and blocking email? - by J. Henry
The question has been posed by a lot of users and persons whose communications have been caught as collateral damage. "Why do people block so widely?"
Here is a small example. Posted to news.admin.net-abuse.email by an administrator running a small vanity domain as his hobby. Each month around 13,000 spam show up. This is not an unusual occurance for anyone running a mailserver, large or small.
<![CDATA[
Subject: Re: An interesting statistic
From: John Henry <snip bad email address>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
<snip non relevant discussion>
Here's a little math for you: Even with the use of tools like SamSpade,
it takes an average of 30 minutes to a) determine if a spam can BE
validly traced, b) trace it, c) make a judgement call as to whether the
source ISP is black, white, pink, or empty and d) send the LART message.
30 minutes times 13000 spams.
390,000 minutes.
6500 hours.
270 days.
38 weeks.
PER MONTH.
And that's just my pissant little vanity domain. *I* am the only e-mail
customer of that domain.
Unfortunately, I have to rent my server space, rather than running my own
mail server. I'm on a dialup way out in the sticks; running my own
domain server simply is not an option. Only recently has my provider
installed a mechanism for even the most elementary of filtering; I
certainly don't have the ability to refuse connections or send 'ERROR
YOU'RE A SPAMMING ASSHOLE STOP CONNECTING TO MY POP SERVER' messages.
So I investigate and lart only the highest-level bulk mailers, and
phishers. When I get a passel of identical messages, or messages from
the same place (you may remember my discussing blive89.biz a few months
back, connecting through 'Clueless and Witless'), or a phishing attempt,
I do what I can to track it and lart it.
But I can't do it all. I'm only one person, I don't have the equipment,
and I frankly don't have the knowhow to effectively fight against such a
large volume of spam messages.
If I 'had no urge to do anything more,' *I would not be reading this
group,* grok?
I just thought it would be an interesting number to throw out, on the off
chance that some dipstick who thinks that spam isn't a problem, isn't
their problem, or isn't as much of a problem as we (tinw) believe it is,
happens to be reading.
--
John Henry
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