[KLUG Members] SpamCop

[Peter Buxton]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 10:22:50AM -0500, Jamie McCarthy was only escaped
   alone to tell thee:

> For activities like identifying terrorists or marking spam, anecdotes
> are not all that helpful... it's the statistics that matter.

You have such a study's URL handy?

> SpamCop is run by bullies who think it's clever to block competing
> anti-spam organizations as spammers.  Read more about them:
> 
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04121.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04128.html
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-04129.html ....

Wow... a series of anecdotes, mostly about the same few incidents. I
especially enjoyed the one from dano@well.com, where he seems to think
SpamCop is a filter.

At
http://www.exim.org/pipermail/exim-users/Week-of-Mon-20030602/054859.html :

> > > I wouldn't use spamcop as a primary choice of DNS blacklists.
> >
> > FYI, I've used spamcop.net for some time now and I've rarely ever
> > seen a false positive.
> 
> Well for me it was more the situation that some of the DNSBL get a bit
> *too* aggressive, when you look at their "mission statement" it's more
> a hate statement (SpamCop excluded).

Please read the rest of the above thread about some alternatives and
some other opinions.

I have not heard of any RBL-like systems that don't tend to nail
legitimate sites, that's why I asked. I would also note that anti-spam
activists are carrying on a kind of war, and aggression (too often
labeled "bullying" by those who feel they have no dog in the fight) is
how you fight a war.

Since SpamCop seems to share the poor reputation of many RBL services,
it would only be discrimination if they *didn't* block competing
services from time to time.

I may as well admit up front that I don't think that anti-spam filters
are worth a damn. You don't stop a skilled thief with better locks, you
throw him in jail -- a sociopolitical solution. (Replies to this
paragraph to advocacy, please.)

> Those of you who had a performance problem with SpamAssassin, you are
> running spamd right?

SA is my other choice. I have it running here at home until I think it
can be installed on a production site.

-- 
AIX is Unix from the universe where Spock has a beard.