I’ve had some problems today with emails being blocked from users using GMail accounts and after some researching and Googling I found out that Spamcop.het sometimes block email from Gmail. Even Google had a warning on the Gmail Help Center and an explanation why it was blocked. It’s because, according to Google, it doesn’t want to forward your ip-address in the header and wants to give you the idea of some privacy. I personally find this too aggressive to my liking.
I advised not so long ago that you could use blacklists to prevent spam. I also warned that you should determine yourself which ones you needed to use as some of them block faster than others. Now that I found this out about spamcop.net I’m removing it from my configuration.
To do this yourself you need to edit the file ‘/etc/postfix/main.cf’ and remove the line:
reject_rbl_client bl.spamcop.net,
This will remove the spamcop blacklist from your setup. You’ll need to trust the junk mail filtering in Thunderbird or Mail.app a bit more. I’m still working on the spamassassin setup but haven’t finished with it yet. I guess I’ll have to give that some higher priority after this.
update: Found an article on Techworld.com that gives some backgound info.
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March 27th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Same here, I stopped using spamcop because of that issue
I only use these two RBL, which is quite enough for my domain :
reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org
March 30th, 2006 at 7:43 am
As an ISP who’s clients rely on to keep their inboxes as free from spam as possible, I was surprised to hear about Google’s stance on why they do not provide the IP address of the originating sender.
I don’t know if you realize this but this “protecting privacy” is something that simply does not exist within the SMTP protocol. So in essense, Google is claiming to provide a level of “privacy” that the rest of the world is never ensured or granted.
If find Google’s stance on this issue simply flawed and will notify my users accordingly and let them decide.
And regarding the use of other lists, including the sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org list, they too have the capability of suffering from the same technical issue as the RBL from spamcop so just because the Spamcop project was mentioned specifically, doesn’t mean that jumping ship and shaking a finger at spamcop is the informed thing to do. Just thought you’d like to know
-=dave
January 21st, 2007 at 9:53 am
Dave its administrators like you that over filter users email, if you filter all but five spam messages thats ok – if you block so much as one desired email, your users will be pissed and use a free service like Gmail Yahoo or MSN.
“I don’t know if you realize this but this “protecting privacy” is something that simply does not exist within the SMTP protocol. So in essense, Google is claiming to provide a level of “privacy” that the rest of the world is never ensured or granted.”
Sure SMTP is insecure but have you ever tried not to be path of least resistance?