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Some Anti-Spam Vendors Blocking and Slowing Gmail
fiorenza writes "Google's Gmail (and corporate mail) are being throttled and sometimes blocked by some anti-spam services, including MessageLabs and Antigen. Ars Technica reports that the blocking is a result of the Google CAPTCHA crack, which has allowed a deluge of spam from Gmail's clusters. Most users won't get blocked mail, but Ars confirmed with MessageLabs that Gmail delivery delays are to be expected."
Umm... I have used a number of commercial email systems (in-house for major companies and institutions) and none of them could provide a service that was even remotely close to what Gmail does for free.
The missing part of this story really is that Google`s Gmail client has very effective anti-spam filtering. I can see why companies who earn their keep protecting typical client-side email systems, would want to make Gmail obsolete or ineffective. Spammers might use Gmail as a tool to spam, but with good filtering it really doesn`t cost that much compared to the loss of time spent weeding out ham from spam.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Then you haven't used Exchange, etc.
Exchange trumps Gmail easily. No Contest.
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I definitely agree with you, if a mail server accepts my mail with a 200 code, then the mail *should* be delivered. Even if its put in someone's spam folder, the message should get there. That's one of my pet peeves. That being said, from my experiences when setting up my mail server, Gmail was probably one of the best about not blocking legit mail (I've had an SPF record since the beginning though). I had lots of problems with Hotmail, and I think my mail was usually marked as spam by Yahoo until I enabled DKIM signing. With SPF records and DKIM, I don't think I have any major problems (though my mail server handles a pitifully small amount of mail, so its not like we're going to get marked as a bulk sender).
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
I have yet to see Exchange work well in any environment over a few dozen people; certainly not without investing large amounts of money on duplicate servers and hardware. Included is my favourite Exchange analogy: If the same method that exchange/outlook uses to store email were used in the real world as a paper filing system: Every document is translated into Greek, and the original is burned. Then they are all glued together into one solid block and stuffed into a magic box with a tiny slot, through which you can talk to a little gnome who somehow gets each message for you as needed. Sometimes the gnome gets confused and it takes hours (sometimes days) for him to sort things out; meanwhile he can't find your documents until he is totally finished becoming unconfused again. As an added bonus the gnome costs several thousand dollars and when he dies every few years you need to buy a new gnome. Oh and if the first box gets (arbitrarily) full you have to buy another special gnomebox, which of course costs $$$
Really? Do you have any idea the resources this would take for some organizations?
Based on stats from my frontend SPAM filters 80 - 90% of ALL mail receive in a day is SPAM.
On my reports some individual users are targeted with between 1500 and 2000 SPAM messages a day. There storage quotas would probably be exceeded over night from SPAM alone.
I would need to increase my storage capacity immensely if I allowed every spam message to get to the users Junk folder. Not to mention the extra bandwidth of allowing all those mail delivery connections to complete OR to send NDRs to forged senders that are going to bounce back at my system and cause even more load.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I think the safest thing they can do right now is return to their invitation only registration in an effort to close the breach. Then they have to start deleting spam accounts quickly before the spammers adapt to inviting themselves. If they are lucky they will be able to delete spam accounts faster than they multiply.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
And YOU definitely haven't used Gmail, which trumps Lotus Notes by a large margin... Oh, wait...
Wow, if you're having that many problems with Exchange, your sysadmins need to do a better job. Exchange is generally a pretty good mail/groupware server for corporate environments. If you throw an Exchange server together in five minutes, then yeah, you might have some problems, but as long as you think it through beforehand (and like with anything computer related, have a good backup strategy) it should work pretty well unless you have some really unusual requirements.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
True, and it is really not necessary to pass all mail. In my experience weeding out mal-configured mail servers (i use postfix rules and greylisting) takes care of over 90% of spam. The rest gets caught by an RBL or tagged by spamassassin and sent to the users spam folder. Things may change any day though depending on future strtegies by spam senders, but at the moment it works quite nicely.
And you certainly haven't used a telegraph. I only get spam about once every month or so, and I can usually ignore it by about the 15th beep or so.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
That is *completely* incorrect. In Exchange 2003 prior to SP2, the limit for the mailbox store was 16 GB. In SP2 they upped that limit to 75 GB, which really is probably enough for most of the small organizations that probably just have a single server running Exchange Standard.
Here is a document about it, scroll down to the part where it says Licensed Database Size Limit. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998066.aspx
In Exchange 2007, Standard Edition can have up to five mailbox stores in each of five storage groups. And there is no limit on size. http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-2007-Store-Related-Changes-Improvements.html
Its also mentioned on the Microsoft Exchange page on wikipedia.
I'm not saying that Exchange is a perfect mailserver for (or worth the cost in) every situation, or denying that Microsoft does some really annoying things, but please try to get your facts straight before you complain about a piece of software.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Here's what happens. On SMTP level. << is for what server sends. Rest is what is sent to server.
<< This is your great SMTP server. Yo!
<< 220 super.server.net ESMTP
HELO srv.my_super_subnet.server.net
<< 250 srv.my_super_subnet.server.net
MAIL FROM: <handle@server.net>
<< 250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: <handle2@server.net>
<< 250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
<< End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Yo
From: Bob Superman <handle@server.net>
To: My Buddy <handle2@server.net>
Want some viagra?
.
<< 554 5.7.1 Rejected, id=sdsada - SPAM
QUIT
<< 221 2.0.0 Bye
See?? No backscatter. The pre-queue filter runs *before* the message is accepted after the . is on the new line indicated end of message.
What happens now is they get,
<< 250 2.6.0 Ok, id=fsffs FROM blah Ok: queued as foo
or similar response. Then the filter runs and junks the mail! *That* runs email. I send out email, and it get junked. It gets delivered 50% of the time because some wise guy runs some new magic filter - no spam gets through, and 50% real messages get binned. Then people that should get mail complain that they never get mail (and not just from me).
If you reply to message from a post queue filter you get backscatter. This is wrong way of doing things. If you reject mail in pre-queue, there is NO backscatter.
The *only* reason to run after queue and drop silently is for mail marked as Bulk, like mailing list software marks mail as Bulk precedence. Any other mail should be treated as a *no* mail lost priority. Otherwise we may just abandon SMTP altogether.