Re: [OT] Re: Feature request - Subtree checkouts

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Apr 10, 2007, 22:12 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0704101501590.6730@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0704101414330.15823@blackbox.fnordora.org>

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, alan wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> > 
> > For example, I will personally never see email that comes directly to my
> > email address though an open mail relay *or* from something that appears
> > to be just a random botnet PC (I forget the exact rule, since I'm hapily
> > ignorant of MIS, but I think it boils down to requiring a good reverse DNS
> > lookup).
> 
> Depending on your definition of "good".

Well, the most common case (and the thing I *think* our spam software does here) is to just confirm that the reverse DNS lookup (that you want to do *anyway* for the "Received" headers for the email) will resolve back to the same IP (aka "FCrDNS").

It's also possible to just not accept mail if the reverse lookup indicates that the sending IP address is a dynamic address, which you can sometimes see from the hostname. I would suggest you *not* name your hosts to contain a lot of numbers and the string "dhcp", for example ;)

> Sometimes I think the anti-spam methods are as obnoxious as the 
> spammers. Almost.)

I'll take strict anti-spam methods any day. I get about 10 pieces of spam a day, that I can handle easily without worrying about it. I shudder to even just think about what it used to be like before aggressive spam filtering.

So I'm personally *solidly* in the camp that says "if you want to send me email, it's worth making a conscious effort to not look like spam".

		Linus