OT: Spamcop BL - good or dangerous?

[Paul Kelly :: Blacknight Solutions]

Gerard Seibert wrote:
> On Wednesday November 29, 2006 at 06:21:54 (AM) Arthur Sherman wrote:
> 
>> Sometimes I get a message from any of lists I'm subscribed to, that mail to
>> my address bounces.
>> And as a reason I see Spamcop blocking sender's (legitimate) server.
>>
>> Here comes the question:
>> What would you use instead of Spamcop?
>> It gotta be free service, and the more lists the better: right now, Spamcop
>> is #1 blocking BL in the logs.
>> I am afraid if I drop it, the blocking will be worse.
> 
> 
> SpamCop does not block legitimate servers. I use SpamCop myself.

I'm sorry, but that is complete rubbish. SpamCop users blatantly report
every and any e-mail they receive even double opt-in mailing lists etc.
It is an extremely dangerous BL to use if you wish to get legitimate e-mail.

The only rbl of use (at smtp transaction time) is xbl. Anything else
will drop legitimate mail, that is a fact.

We host 16k domains, of which we're scanning around 5000 for spam and
other nasties. We see 200k mails a day through mailscanner with a factor
of 5 being rejected at smtp time by xbl.

We use spamcop in SA to add a few points to the spam score, we've found
that this is the only use for spamcop today. Anything else results in
users complaining on a daily basis that mail is being lost.

Bottom line, Spamcop should not be used by ISP's, HSP's at a bare
minimum at smtp time and for the rest of the people who admin their own
mail servers I would highly recommend not using it. xbl is extremely
safe to use.


-- 
Paul Kelly
Technical Director
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