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Paul Graham Describes Dangers of Spam Blacklists

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the what-we're-stuck-with dept.

CRoby writes "Paul Graham posted an essay describing the danger and corruption of the main spammer blacklists today. It discusses MAPS and the SBL, the blacklist created to try to alleviate the abuses of MAPS, and suggests (maybe) another blacklist's creation."

5 of 611 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$article_title by $blowhard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    if (blowhard == "Paul Graham") {
    "My " + smart_friends[] + " tell me this, so it must be true, and therefore, anyone who does the opposite is stupid! lisp rocks!";
    }

  2. Re:Definitely a bad idea... by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes, I do get it. I have.

    What I do is get a new ISP that doesn't allow spammers.

    Simple. Problem resolved.

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  3. Re:Pure and simple... by Megor1 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Lol for fun look up the picture of the guy that runs spambag and then ask yourself if you want him telling you who can send you mail (It's a Jem)

    --
    Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
  4. Re:Wrong by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 0, Troll
    What they do is allow others to block email between two diffrent people, simply because they run the mail servers that sit between them. If it was only individual users who were using these blocklists, it would be a diffrent issue. But it's not.
    I operate my OWN MAIL SERVER ON MY VERY OWN NETWORK. Those are MY PRIVATE PROPERTY, so I MAKE MY OWN GODDAMMED RULES and I DECIDE WHO CAN CONNECT TO MY NETWORK OR NOT. For this, blocklists are invaluable because other people do the gruntwork of discovering the IP addresses of others.

    In a nutshell, it's "MY NETWORK, MY RULES". Got any problem with that???

  5. Re:Definitely a bad idea... by Pig+Hogger · · Score: -1, Troll
    Anyway, they shouldn't be blocking entire blocks of IPs. That doesn't even make sense. What does one guy on one IP out of hundreds or thousands who spammed for most of a day before he got caught have to do with my server which has run clean and reliable and secure and in good faith (including SPF and everything else) for the better part of a decade?
    As Paul Graham already stated, this is just a strongarm tactic to harass as many innocent parties as possible. There's no other explanation for it. Are two spammers really worth denying tens of thousands of (in the case of Paul Graham) Yahoo customers?
    That Paul Graham is terminally clueless. When a hosting provider provides services to a spammer, he is a spam-supporter (as well as the other clients who pay him), so it is only fair that the whole network be listed as the spamhaus it is.