[TriLUG] OT: Word to the wise about e-mail blocking on RR

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Joseph Tate wrote:

> Ahh, but these were all to a single address, and very disparate 
> content.  Now, I'll concede that running an evolutionary algorithm on 
> the sever might be a little resource intensive, but not out of the 
> realm of possibility.

Trust me, with a high volume mail server, it's outside the realm of 
reasonability.  :)

> Also, don't many spam and viruses have their own smtp servers, and 
> therefore bypass any relayhost completely?

Most do, but the ones that don't cause dramatically more problems for 
the ISP than those that do.  If you relay your Spam to them, they're 
very likely to get blacklisted on various RBLs - causing them an 
enormous headache and terrible PR.

> Now, I'm not so much pointing fingers, but putting out a warning for 
> anyone else who decides to do something similar.  Set your transport 
> map up before trying this.

Very valid point, and thanks for the heads up.

> My outgoing capabilities will be restored tomorrow, and it's only a 
> minor inconvenience (for me).  Just hoping someone else can learn from 
> my mistake.

Now if only those that learn, would be the virus-writers, spammers, and 
other miscreants of the web.  If they'd stop this child's play, such 
measures wouldn't be necessary.

Aaron S. Joyner