John,
Assuming for the sake of argument that you're reporting the situation (mostly)
accurately for major ISPs, I still think it's important that blacklists and
reputation servers be explicitly cited when they're used to bounce a message.
It's certainly not the case that "nobody" uses incompetently run DNSBLs, even
if none of the major ISPs use them. And it's not as if major ISPs handle all
of the incoming mail. The standards exist for everyone, not just major ISPs.
I've suffered far more harm from people blocking my incoming mail due to input
from DNSBLs, than I've ever suffered from spammers. But it's not as if one
is evil and the other isn't. They're both evil. Rather than trying to ignore
one kind of evil while blocking another, some sort of balanced approach seems
in order.
Keith
On May 11, 2011, at 9:51 AM, John Levine wrote:
The problem I have with this argument is that blackhole lists, in my
experience, cause a large number of legitimate messages to fail to be
delivered.
Having gone to a lot of MAAWG meetings, and talked to people who run
the mail systems at every large ISP in the country, and quite a few in
other countries, I can report that their experience with DNSBLs is
utterly unlike yours. There are plenty of incompetently run DNSBLs,
but nobody uses them so they don't matter.
I have my reservations about the wisdom or utility of providing fine
grained reports to people whose mail you don't accept, but not because
of error rates in DNSBLs.
R's,
John