[H-ANNOUNCE] Humbug is now Greylisting mail

[Bruce Campbell]

Recently, I came to the conclusion that I have a problem.  Specifically, I 
don't have enough resources to properly[2] deal with every spammer that 
tries to send email to my mailboxes.

So, as of a few hours ago, the main Humbug mail machine, 
caliburn.humbug.org.au, now subjects all incoming mail to the temporary 
delays set out by the Greylisting concept.  Useful reading matter on the 
Greylisting concept can be found at http://www.greylisting.org/ .

In short, a tuplet of three values, sending domain, sending IP and full 
destination address is created from all incoming mail.  If this tuplet has 
been seen before, it is accepted.  If it has not been seen before, it is 
temporarily deferred, and the sender should try again later.  If they are 
good and proper MTAs, they will indeed try again later and the mail will 
get through.

Since most spam senders are not good and proper MTAs, they do not try to 
resend their mail at a later point in time, and thus, a marked reduction 
in the amount of spam is observed.  This is the goal of the Humbug setup.

In the Humbug setup, there is a slight twist, in that email sent to the 
list addresses will be immediately accepted if it is from a recognised 
subscriber to that list.  Note that this test is performed on the SMTP 
MAIL FROM field, and not on the not-yet-received 'From:' address in the 
mail data.

If your @humbug.org.au alias, like mine, has been receiving a lot of spam, 
you will notice that the amount of spam you receive via said alias will 
reduce.

As is usual when significant changes are made to systems, I have prepared 
a small question and answer section to quell the most obvious questions. 
Please send all other questions to myself, the general or chat lists, 
depending on the relevance of the question.

Having the flu sucks.

--==--
Bruce.

[4] Yes.
[2] The recharge time on the orbital cannon is now longer than the
     incoming spam interval, and people were starting to notice the gaping
     holes in the landscape.
[1] I do have a reputation to maintain, but RFCs 2821 and 2822 clearly
     state that the behaviour of treating temporary errors as permanent is
     just plain wrong.
[3] Aren't the footnotes in this mail out of order, and sometimes
     unreferenced? [4]

Question and answers.

How long are the timeouts?

 	The initial block period is five minutes.  The tuple will be
 	remembered for 7 days, and if they haven't sent any additional
 	mail during that time, it will be forgotten and they will have to
 	pass the test again.

I get important email sent to my alias.  Will this stop it getting 
through?

 	If the sending host is using a good and proper MTA, it will get
 	through eventually.  If you really wanted to receive all of those
 	bodily enhancement offers, just search for them yourself.

The company rang me up and said that they got a permanent error when 
trying to send email to my address.  Thats not how its meant to work is 
it?

 	Point out to them that their MTA is not a good and proper one,
 	since it seems to be treating temporary errors as permanent ones.
 	Offer to fix their servers, assuming that your alias actually
 	exists.

They say its your problem.

 	Firstly, thats not a question.  Secondly, its not my problem.[1]

That bastard Bruce said something on a Humbug mailing list that I don't 
agree with.  Will my reply get sent to the list right away?

 	Assuming that your MTA is sending the SMTP 'MAIL FROM' command as
 	your subscribed address, it will be.

I sent it, but it still gets delayed.  What gives?

 	You're not l33t enough dude.  Go look up the difference between
 	'From:' and 'MAIL FROM'.