Fight Spam With Nolisting

An anonymous reader writes with the technique of Nolisting, which fights spam by specifying a primary MX that is always unavailable. The page is an extensive FAQ and how-to guide that addressed the objections I immediately came up with. From the article: "It has been observed that when a domain has both a primary (high priority, low number) and a secondary (low priority, high number) MX record configured in DNS, overall SMTP connections will decrease when the primary MX is unavailable. This decrease is unexpected because RFC 2821 (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) specifies that a client MUST try and retry each MX address in order, and SHOULD try at least two addresses. It turns out that nearly all violators of this specification exist for the purpose of sending spam or viruses. Nolisting takes advantage of this behavior by configuring a domain's primary MX record to use an IP address that does not have an active service listening on SMTP port 25. RFC-compliant clients will retry delivery to the secondary MX, which is configured to serve the role normally performed by the primary MX)."

Comments

Re:This is bullshit!

[/dev/trash]

You want to outlaw free speech?

Re:This is bullshit!

[Elemenope]

You need not open your mail, esp. when the subject line is something that you aren't interested; it is the same filtering methodology one uses for snail mail, by checking the return address and other identifying markers on an envelope before deciding whether or not to bother opening it or just tossing it. Difference is, you can do the toss action with two clicks online, whereas it is a more extensive process in meatworld. Heck, its even easier with 'spam filters' that do 80% of the work for you.

Thus, there is no 'screaming penis ads in home'; it's a poor and deceptive metaphor. And, yes, advertising generally is free speech. I'm no great fan of spam (in point of fact, I hate it) just as I dislike most modern advertising in general, but it does seem to be a latent unavoidable consequence of valuing free expression in a product-value based society. I deeply love my right to express myself, and often enjoy the way others put that right to use as well.