Spam control again

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Joe <joseph at etard.net> wrote:
> I'm sure if I removed all the measures I've taken on our
> mailserver I would easily surpass the 100+ messages per day thresh hold.
> These measures are not merely limited to SpamAssassin. They include black
> hole lists, requirements that destination must be local, pop-before-smtp,
> reverse host look-up and more. I personally see close to a 95% reduction
> in spam and other users on the server likely see close to 100%

Correct me if I'm wrong, y'all, but I think Joe just made my point.  If the
appropriate response that the average consumer must make is to install Linux,
install SpamAssassin, configure multiple black-hole lists, figure out how to
get reverse host lookups, and more, in order to get a 95% reduction in spam
(and do it all over again with new software 6 months from now), then clearly
we do not have a viable technical/political/financial solution to the spam
problem.

I too have taken measures identical to Joe's, but I do not wish that
requirement on my non-technical friends who mainly use hotmail or AOL.
Hotmail, in particular, is awful in that it's a spam magnet and the sysadmins
there have not done an effective job sorting spam from normal email.

One of the thoughts I'm contemplating, though, is offering email service to
folks who want my sysadmin expertise applied to their day-to-day spam problem.
 I'd find myself doing essentially what I did 10 years ago:  setting up email
for the public, via webmail/imap this time rather than UUCP.  (But it'd take a
lot of prodding to get me to do *that* again!)

cheers--
-rich