[LINK] SMH 25/2/04 Telstra mail server blacklisted by SpamCop

[Daniel Rose]

Regarding blocking 25 outbound from clients:

"As a result, customers will find that their Internet experience will be 
dramatically improved through the reduction of spam as well as the ability 
to send to and receive e-mail from other ISPs."

A reduction in the ability to send email is about right, I'm not sure that
bigpond users will find a "dramatic" reduction in spam, I don't think most
of it comes from Telstra.

1) Telstra's dynamic IP addresses are almost certainly on many blacklists
anyway, most ISP's customer IPs are, so port 25 won't help there.

2) If "the Telstra mailserver" (only one?) has been reported 350 times, then
blocking 25 outbound won't help that.

Port 25 blockages (blocks? Blockings?) might help though, because as we have
previously discussed, many sending PCs are trojaned windows boxes.

Port blocking shows enough pros to be adopted, but I don't see it as a
sensible solution -- it doesn't scale.  In the end we get all traffic being
bottlenecked at servers run by the ISP, when all that _should_ be required
is comms infrastructure.

I suppose if this continues we'll see cut-rate ISPs which offer a connection
and nothing else.  I'd like that.


Regards,


Daniel Rose                     62621599
Postmaster/Helpdesk
National Library of Australia