dan slimmon21h ago

There's this myth that automated spam detection is hard because spammers are all very clever masters of disguise.

No. Spammers are stupid as a shoe. They have dog shit for brains.

Automated spam detection is hard because the line between spam and "legitimate" marketing activity is a fiction.

Show threadAndrew Zonenberg17h ago
@danslimmon just block all legitimate marketing emails problem solved
Show threadMarjorieR12h ago
@azonenberg @danslimmon most spam I get is badly formatted and gets rejected by postfix even before my spam filter gets to see it. The most common fail is no reverse DNS.
And my spam filters then rejects most of the rest, they don't even get into my spam folders.
So most of the marketing emails I get to see are from companies I have bought from in the past and I've decided I want to see when they are running sales: useful for items I regularly buy such as bike brake pads.
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:9h ago

@marjolica @azonenberg @danslimmon

If we blocked no reverse DNS, I'm not sure there would be anything left.

Show threadMarjorieR

@jrdepriest @azonenberg @danslimmon not my experience.
Over the last 4 weeks I rejected 16.3% of emails.
Of that 1.9% were replied 4.7.1 (try again later) and 0.4% were replied 5.7.1 (spam) and ended up in my spam folders to review.

On the other hand 13.4% lacked a reverse hostname. The great majority of those were from China (.cn). Only one was from a (UK) site I have bought from.

3:40pmWeb
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:5h ago

@marjolica @azonenberg @danslimmon

I imagine if a business is only going to maintain a few reverse lookups anyway, they will prioritize their MX records over the A records. I am used to looking at all the DNS requests and responses, not just those for email.