[Nottingham] Tux Games Antispam - Your message is being held

[Alan Pope]

Hi Martin,

On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 06:48:27PM +0000, Martin wrote:
> http://email.about.com/cs/spamgeneral/a/challenge_resp.htm
> "Not only does this sound simple enough and sufficiently elegant, it
> also works reasonably well"
> 

Nice editing there. That section in full reads:-

"Not only does this sound simple enough and sufficiently elegant, it also 
works reasonably well. Yet, challenge/response systems of filtering spam 
also introduce their own and very serious set of problem."

Linking to:-

http://email.about.com/cs/spamgeneral/a/challenge_resp_2.htm
"The Problems of Challenge/Response Filtering"

Which results in the conclusion:-

"If you rely on unknown people to contact you, using a challenge/response 
spam filter is out of the question."

Personally I never click through CR systems even if I want to contact the 
other party. I feel to do so justifies its existence and I dislike CR that 
much that I'll avoid it at pretty much all costs.

Personally I use a combination of greylisting and spamassassin on my server. 
Neither is perfect, but I believe that until spam is fixed (hah!) it's up to 
_me_ to manage _my_ inbox, and not place the burdon on others to do that for 
me (as is the case with CR).

Greylisting has cut my spam by a factor of a hundred, and spamassassin even 
further. I can get the odd one or two spam in a day. There are issues with 
it, in that I have to wait longer for one of mails (like forum activations), 
and sometimes systems don't like the greylist bounces, but on the whole it's 
better for _me_ and doesn't adversely affect anyone - or ask anyone to add 
any time to their email rituals.

Cheers,
Al.