[conspire] how to implement a stupid idea [Re: How not to do antispam, latest in a continuing series]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Dire Red (deirdre at deirdre.net):

> I honestly decided to punt on the spam problem by outsourcing my email
> (to fastmail.com).
> 
> I can receive all my domain email there (for quite a few domains), it
> costs me $40/yr, and they are, in my experience, better at handling spam
> than anyone else I've seen. 

Good to know.  

FWIW, my setup on linuxmafia.com routinely does better than GMail, and 
it's nothing more complex than following the instructions in J.P.
Boggis's Eximconfig tarball ('Eximconfig' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Mail/)
to configure Exim4, sa-exim, and spamd.

I'm NOT surprised at doing better than GMail (despite their million-eyes
Bayesian classifier), because unlike them I'm at liberty to implement
aggressive policies and decide my own acceptance criteria without being
sandbagged by that one user who says 'But what if it's a _real_ Nigerian
prince?'  It's not that GMail can't do better; it's that they can't be
that effective and still remain one-size-fits-all.

linuxmafia.com doesn't have to be one-size-fits-all.  E.g., I can make
my MTA reject all incoming mail whose delivery is grossly in violation
of RFCs, and then whitelist a few domains that I want to hear from
anyway.  Fastmail.com, like GMail, can't afford that luxury.