Reduction in Spam?

[Alex Neuman van der Hans]

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I've seen a steady increase in the spam that's dropped at the MTA level 
because the spammers wants to send the message before the "220" SMTP 
greeting (thanks to Sendmail's GreetPause feature), as well as spam 
being blocked because of RBL's. Spam that makes it through those two has 
increased somewhat less, though. What *has* increased dramatically is 
the amount of "sober" and other worms/variants, which I usually find out 
about when perusing the logs - clamav-milter usually takes care of it 
*before* anything hits MailScanner.

What's also increased is the control some ISP's are exerting on 
end-users; some of the local ISP's (even *more* so across their dialup 
IP blocks) are blocking port 25 except to their own mailservers, and you 
can only use *those* if you use SMTP AUTH first. Since my clients 
usually use SMTPS on port 465 (or have been using SMTP+AUTH on 587) they 
don't have a problem.

I've also seen an increase in the amount of open wifi access points in 
downtown Panama City, Republic of Panama (where I live). Since most of 
these are hooked up to unrestricted DSL/Cable connections, it opens the 
door for local spammers working for local (or foreign) companies to do 
some damage while robbing the clueless of their bandwidth and possibly 
making them liable for what they did.

Let's hope we, as responsible sysadmins/consultants, can do something 
about this during next year...

Happy Holidays to all!

Martin Hepworth wrote:

>Quite
>
>The article does seem confused about where the reduction is.....
>
>My stats do NOT concur with theres. Over the last 6 months I still an
>increase...
>
>--
>Martin Hepworth 
>Snr Systems Administrator
>Solid State Logic
>Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
>>Behalf Of Drew Marshall
>>Sent: 21 December 2005 09:18
>>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>>Subject: [MAILSCANNER] Reduction in Spam?
>>
>>I am not convinced by this article as my stats read quite differently!
>>
>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4547474.stm
>>
>>The interesting quote is '"similarly report a decrease in the amount of
>>spam reaching consumers' inboxes"'
>>
>>Perhaps this is because of the amount of mail being processed by
>>MailScanner on a daily basis?
>>
>>Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year all!
>>
>>Drew
>>
>>
>>--
>>In line with our policy, this message has
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>>
>
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