Topic: Spam filtering and rejection

[MSmith]

It's an ongoing issue, of course. I've checked into the status of various filtering methods and here's a combination I've been reasonably happy with, checking organizations that are actually still useful (unlike, for instance, rfc-ignorant):

RBLList bl.spamcop.net:dnsbl.ahbl.org:zen.spamhaus.org
SBLList rhsbl.ahbl.org:multi.surbl.org

And of course the lovely GeoIP
I know that last is frowned upon, but damn does it block a lot of spam.

Additions and comments solicited!

[Knuddi]

Obviously spamhaus is a paid for service if you are not private which I assume many using the SME server happens to be. With respect to GeoIP then you need to be receiving only very local emails as servers in today s world are everywhere. But agree when looking at the distribution we get - I am sure few of our customers (based mainly in Scandinavia) expect mail from Iran or Peru..



The ahbl.org list doesn't seem super updated - does it actually catch anything?

[MSmith]

Spamhaus does an excellent job (after GeoIP rejects a goodly fraction) but I have seen a few caught by ahbl so I keep it. What I did was go through the default lists as well as those that I've seen used by others and visited the sites to see which were still active.

My clients are small businesses in the USA so they receive very few legitimate emails from servers outside the USA.