As a system administrator that has to cope with tremdous amounts of spam for his corporation:
We are very glad about greylisting. It cuts the spam load that the conventional filters have to cope with by more than 90%.
The only people having problems with this (and the complaints in this category fall within this scope) are people without properly and RFC compliant configured mailsystems. And the delays I saw in some of the complaints show that their mailadmins have trouble with their mailsystems and their queues.
And I have seen the impact on our outbound servers by other greylisting systems and they are almost nonexistant, so I am absolutly satisfied with it.
It helps me do my job and cuts the complaints by our users and managers about spam.
About the load we have from spam: Last week we had an extreme influx of about 800000 additional Spamconnects per day and greylisting did help coping with it. Normal load is about 100 Spam per minute with about 20 legitimate mails per minute.
Greylisting is a convenient form of some ISP`s to basically "blacklist" your emails, even though the ISPs are of good repute .
It pi$$e$ me off that especially small European ISP`s ( and free webmail providers ) choose this form of spam control instead of investigating further, especially after being alerted by their clients.
In my opinion it adds to inconvenient communication breakdown as in my case, I sometimes can`t be arsed any longer to try and stay in touch with some people, as everything gets returned .y
bjarne Wrote:As the thread name says, what do you think of greylisting.org? In what ways/directions should I develop it?
imho, these forums are worthless as is. there is however potential.
#1 - Turn off unregistered access to making comments on your forum
#2 - Delete posts that completely off topic.
#3 - Delete posts that are obviously just spammers complaining in the only place they can find to whine because they can't get their crap through
good luck with your efforts
Guest Wrote:bjarne Wrote:As the thread name says, what do you think of greylisting.org? In what ways/directions should I develop it?
imho, these forums are worthless as is. there is however potential.
#1 - Turn off unregistered access to making comments on your forum
#2 - Delete posts that completely off topic.
#3 - Delete posts that are obviously just spammers complaining in the only place they can find to whine because they can't get their crap through
good luck with your efforts
I've been cleaning up the forum a few times, and I guess now I've had enough. Will turn of guest posting shortly.
It's funny though. On some sites leaving guest posting on is not a problem, but here, a particular topic is being spammed all the time :-(
EDIT: On a side note, for people considering using this forum software: wow the copy permission feature is sweet :-)
I only heard of greylisting when I wrote to my redirection provider to ask why some emails being sent to me were not getting through.
When I say not getting through, this is what I mean. I never get these mails. I know because I tried to email myself from another office and I got the delay message. But, the emails NEVER arrived.
It's fine to talk about how it should work and how servers should be configured, but in reality, mail is lost, communications are disrupted. The very purpose of using email is brought in to question.
Frankly, I think greylisting is a poor solution to the problem SOME people face with spam.
I am writing to say that without this website I would have had no idea why my email was bounced. At least I was able to look up greylisting and understand what was going on, and then was able to resend my email. I am hoping that the email will get through. My mail server obviously did not do what it was supposed to do. I have no control over my mail server but I will inform the administrators that I don't think it is working with greylisting.
What people don't seem to understand is, there is no point complaining and carrying on. The solution is to communicate! If I tell my admins that something is wrong, they can do something about it. If I come to this forum and complain, the problem will remain and noone will know about the issue.
I think greylisting 'looks good on paper' and perhaps it will work if people put a small amount of effort in to iron out the problems.
If there exists a problem with email, in this case spam, and the solution is to create a situation where mail does not get through has the situation improved? In the case of the solution provider, certainly, otherwise they would not have implemented it. In the case of the end user, not neccessarily. If spam was not a major issue or was dealt with in other ways then a solution such as greylisting itself becomes a new problem, thereby not improving the situation of the end user. To suggest that the onus should then be on the end user to 'educate' the mail server administrators so that greylisting can work is just pure conceit on the part of the solution provider. Their job is to solve problems, not pass them on down the line to others to follow through.
It's like a bus driver slamming on the brakes, causing passengers to fall. When they protest, he informs them to take it up with the drivers of the cars which get in his way. Ultimately, the driver is responsible.
Similarily, if greylisting is implemented it is done so deliberately and with full knowledge of problems it may cause in an imperfect world. Any problems arising from such implementation are ultimately the responsibility of those who do so.
I think it was not good idea to make greylisting because about others i don't know but for me it's more important to recive my important email doesn't matter with spam.
But in GreyListing i got off from 90% spam but my important email are not getting through and that means loss in busniess.
To all who have posted a complaint about greylisting causing them to lose messages: there are things you can do to improve your situation.
If you take the time to understand what is happening, you'll be in a much better position to get things working the way you'd like them to.
Greylisting, in the simplest of terms, is just pretending that there is a problem which prevents the message from being accepted. Sending servers which cannot deal with this "pretend failure" will also lose mail when real problems having nothing to do with greylisting occur. A network outage, a power failure, software errors, a server overloaded by spam, even a mailbox that is full would cause a message sent by someone using these same servers to be lost.
These everyday normal internet "hiccups" would cause countless messages to be lost without explanation if there were not some system in place to prevent it. Thankfully, the smart folks that designed the standards we use today were aware of these problems and implemented very effective methods to prevent any loss of email because of them. Email servers that do not correctly follow these standards will lose messages for a wide range of problems (and they may give the sender no notice of their failure).
If you are stuck on an email server that is unable to deal with these common place every day situations, I can understand your dissatisfaction. If your provider is regularly losing your messages for any reason, be it greylisting or otherwise, you have every right to be upset with them. However, please direct your efforts at the only people who can help you: Your provider. Encourage them to correct their misconfigured and therefore unreliable server. Most mail servers which lose messages can be corrected in a few minutes by changing a single setting! A provider or system admin that is unwilling or unable to do this for you is no good.
On the other hand, you may be upset because you did not receive a message from one of the people stuck in the above situation. While you might believe greylisting caused this, it is in fact their provider's misconfiguration that is causing the loss. Greylisting simply brings to light a problem that has existed all along. What about when there is a network problem somewhere on the internet between them and you? Or maybe your provider has a server fail, or maybe someone there trips over the wrong cord... you will lose email from these same people! That's not good, so let's hope that the attention greylisting brings to these misconfigured servers will help their problems to be corrected. You might be able to help by being well informed about the situation and encouraging people who have problems sending to you to ask their providers to fix it. You might also pass along resources like this website .
-LodC
LodC, thank you for your patronising explanation of the details of greylisting, which for me at least, were already pretty clear.
My situation matches your final hypothetical in that I'm unable to receive messages from people who mail to my now well established (Been using it for years with no problems until greylisting) email address provided to me by a redirection company. This company, in it's infinite wisdom has decided it simply cannot operate without the wonderful solution of greylisting.
Your hypothetical details all manner of wonderful benefits that will arise from people receiving an error message when they attempt email me. These apparently range from them realising how foolish they've been not to have changed 'a single setting' through to them being provided with a wonderful opportunity to be educated by me as to the joys of greylisting itself. I can even direct them to this site! How lovely it all is in your simplistic fantasy world.
In the real world, the one in which I and may others like me operate, things are somewhat different. In my world if I hand my business card to someone, they might decide to email me, they might not. They've just met me. If they do email me and they receive an error message which they've never encountered before and which looks pretty similar to a 'bounce back' message, then that's what they'll assume. The email bounced. What's worse, if they bother to read the message it instructs them NOT to resend as the message is simply delayed.
From this they can only assume two things. Either 1) My email address is wrong or I've not paid my bills or 2) I will eventually receive their message (which I won't) and my non-reply will be construed as rudeness.
Where in all this do I get the opportunity to "help their problems" or "pass along resources like this website"? If NEVER GET the email then I never know they've attempted to contact me at all.
Your hypothetical assumes they'll either ring me or use a carrier pigeon or perhaps place an ad in the local paper to inform me that there's some problem with my email address. Total and absolute ivory tower IT professional conceit. Like everyone using the internet is just waiting for a reason to talk to their technical staff about server configuration. The point is to stay out of the way and make it work, not find ways to make yourself, and your professional concerns everyone else's problem.