[PLUG] Posting history crisis...

[Paul Heinlein]

On Mon, 28 May 2007, Michael Rasmussen wrote:

> Changing email addresses is an ineffective spam stratagey that 
> annoys people who try to stay in touch with you. spammers spam 
> non-existant email addresses!
>
> Finding an email provider, such as Google, or getting adept at 
> implementing traps and filters is a necessity in today's world.
>
> My system receives about 500 spam an hour (measured since February 
> 10 of this year) and on average one or two of those make it to my 
> inbox.  Spamassassin is the primary tool in that filtering.

I don't get anywhere near 500 messages per hour, much less 500 
spam messages per hour, but my system ends up accepting for delivery 
only 45% - 50% of the messages sent to it. Here are the stats for the 
last couple weeks:

Totals:
  10501 -- Messages processed
   3634 -- Messages blocked by rule (34.6%)
   1826 -- Messages rejected during scanning (17.4%)
   5041 -- Messages accepted for delivery (48.0%)

Details...

Messages Blocked By Rule:
   3409 -- Known spam IP address (sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org)
    163 -- Invalid recipient or relay
     62 -- Invalid sender domain

Messages Rejected During Scanning (milter-based):
   1793 -- SpamAssassin
     33 -- ClamAV

A hobbyist mail admin can do whatever s/he likes, but IMO any 
professional admin who doesn't scan inbound mail for nastiness is 
pushing the boundary of incompetence.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com