tensigh wrote:
How do I use DNS blocklists? When it comes to SA, I didn't just arbitrarily set a low score; I have spent a fair amount of time blacklisting subjects and senders and restricting locales. I've also tweaked at least 20 different scoring methods (including HTML messages) to help reduce spam getting into my inbox. But either way, if you could offer some advice, I'd be grateful.
I'm using Outlook which has the worst track record on Spam filtering. But any help you could offer on DNS block lists, I'd be grateful.
Our tool for configuring DNS blocklists (I personally prefer that term to "blacklists" which sounds awfully Cold-War-paranoid) is at
https://members.sonic.net/email/spam/fi ... blacklists
Basically what it does is when a message for you hits our MX server (before we even feed the message to SpamAssassin) we compare the source IP address of the message with the lists you have enabled. If the message is coming from a known bad actor we reject the message immediately and it never even ends up in your graymail. We have a handful of lists enabled by default, but many are available. Each list can be assigned a score. All the scores of the matching lists are added up, and if the total is ten or greater, the message is rejected.
The SORBs lists are pretty popular, though their methodology is a bit too aggressive for us to be comfortable with turning it on by default for everybody.
If you look at the headers for a message, you should see a line that looks something like:
Code: Select all
X-Sonic-SB-IP-RBLs: IP RBLs sorbs-spam.
This tells you which (if any) of the DNS lists would have stopped that message from coming through. In this case, the spam.dnsbl.sorbs.net list, which I do not have enabled on my account, was matched. The message in question was an ad from Sports Authority, but wan't actually spam. I would have been just as happy to not get that "20% off your entire purchase" noise in my inbox, but they got my address legitimately and I've never asked them to stop sending.
tensigh wrote:
I just noticed one comment came from a Sonic employee - if SA isn't that good of a tool, does Sonic plan to offer a better one in the future? I'm sure there are less technically inclined customers that are going to not send complaints but decide to drop Sonic as a carrier if this keeps up.
SpamAssassin isn't the magic bullet that will end all spam for all time. Even when they rifle through your underwear drawer, Google still manages to let some leak through. Our Systems folks have been working on a number of changes to how mail passes through our network, but I'm not 100% up to speed on exactly where they are with that. In the meantime, SpamAssassin is healthy part of a balanced breakfast, not a panacea.