From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 27 12:11:13 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAFFA16A40B for ; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from mail.ticketswitch.com (mail.ticketswitch.com [194.200.93.188]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7153713C483 for ; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from [172.16.1.6] (helo=dilbert.ticketswitch.com) by mail.ticketswitch.com with esmtp (Exim 4.60 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1HAmOk-0007ox-PW; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:10 +0000 Received: from petefrench by dilbert.ticketswitch.com with local (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1HAmOk-0003yQ-Bh; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:10 +0000 To: joao@matik.com.br, peterjeremy@optushome.com.au In-Reply-To: <20070127041608.GG927@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> Message-Id: From: Pete French Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:10 +0000 Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Loosing spam fight X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:11:13 -0000 > Except that the original mail was talking about greylisting. This won't > reject any mail sent from a MTA that correctly implements SMTP. According > to the SMTP specs, I am perfectly at liberty to tell you that I can't > accept your mail right now, please try again later. =20 But isn't the point of greylisting that it *will* reject spam, because the MTA won't retry. Indeeed I thought that was the basis of why greylisting is a good idea in the fight against spam. Ergo the guy is right you *are* rejecting the email - because you can talk about stndards all you like, but in practice you know that if it's spam then it isn't likely to come back, and hence saying 'try again' actually effectively rejects the message. That's the entire point isn't it ? Of course, most of us *do* want to achive that result - but what the previous poster seem to be trying to say (to me) is that rejecting mail instead of delivering it to a separate 'spam' inbox is wrong, because it is not our place to decide what our users may or may not want to recive and hence we should not discard email for them without giving them a say in the matter. In practical terms, of course, this is what the vast majority of users *do* want us to do - but in purely theoretical ethical terms the guy is actually right! -pete.