Fw: iPermitMail Email Firewall

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

Bill Horne <bill at horne.net> asked:
> Has anyone else been getting these? Anyone know why? My messages post OK to
> the list, but I get this response.

A BLU list subscriber apparently is using a proxy re-mailer to block all
incoming mail that is not on a white-list.

We're probably going to see this more and more.  Spammers are bringing on
these really annoying countermeasures.

Hopefully whoever subscribed to iPermitMail's spam-blocking service will
recognize themselves and either add "To: discuss at blu.org" to the whitelist, or
discontinue the service and use another which is more mailing-list friendly.

For the rest of you considering challenge-response white list services, I
suggest (a) not using them at all, I find them highly annoying when I'm trying
to send email to someone, or (b) if you do use them, bear in mind what they do
to mailing-list postings.  Before enabling a new spam filter of any kind, test
the heck out of its behavior when it comes to mailing lists.  It violates RFCs
and common-sense rules of conduct to send error messages to the "From" address
in a message-board posting, the software should send those to the Errors-To
field.

<--soapbox mode-->
A whole lot of spam-filtering software out there has been slapped together in
a hurry the past few months, in response to the crushing tidal wave of spam
which arrived in 2003.  Unfortunately that tidal wave seems to be growing
about 20% a month, if my own in-box is any indication.  Slapped-together
software has a lot of unintended side effects (in this case, they often
contribute even more to the cesspool of annoyance email polluting the 'net).
<--doesn't that feel better?-->

-rich