[Greylist-users] relay identification

[Tim Freeman]

From: Allan E Johannesen <aej at wpi.edu>
>Prior greylist negotiations appear to mean that that IP runs an SMTP mechanism
>which will retry until success occurs.  Yes, it might still be spam, but I
>don't think greylist will do anything to it but delay it for an hour.  It's
>still going to hit unless the place gets blacklisted.

The one hour delay might give spamtrap RBL's like cbl.abuseat.org a
chance to blacklist the spammer.

>Well, to try to avoid hysteria about delayed email.  We appear to have some
>cases of that.

I was thinking about reducing the delay from the default 58 minutes to
5 minutes to decrease the incidence of that problem (well, I'm my only
user, so there's no hysteria, but you know what I mean).  Then I
thought of the greylist delay & RBL blacklist scenario I mention above
and went back to 58 minutes.

But this does raise the question -- in the absence of an RBL, does
anyone have reason to believe that spammers in practice get through a
5 minute greylist delay who won't get through a 58 minute greylist
delay?  If not, then the only benefit of 58 minutes over 5 minutes is
for the people who do an RBL first.

-- 
Tim Freeman                                                  tim at fungible.com
I xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra xerox machine. -- Steven Wright