|
This howto describes black listing for the AntiSpam Spam Blocker using the publicly available black lists. The AntiSpam Spam Filter also uses black listing of a different type. |
Black listing is good news and bad news.
Understanding a little bit about black listing is helpful when making decisions about whether to use this feature.
From a bad news point of view, using black lists delegates part of your security to people you likely do not know. While the black list organizations appear to have integrity, it does mean someone else is making access decisions for you.
Delegating is also the good news. There are many black list organizations with differing criteria on how to add and remove offending email servers. You can find the black list organizations by using one of the Internet search engines. This means you can choose.
Some organizations, for example, black list open relay servers only. They do not know or care if the server is a source of spam, they just list all of the open relays they can find.
Other black lists respond to complains about spam.
At times, the black list organizations can appear to be unreasonable. For example, you may believe you have a viable reason for running an open relay and keeping your server spam-free through other means. But that makes no difference for them black listing your server.
On the other hand, however, using black lists works. It is a dynamic system, changing as the spam sources change. Using black lists can help keep your server spam free.