Some actual data presented anecdotally

Some actual data presented anecdotally

Posted Jul 12, 2011 6:56 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Some actual data presented anecdotally by lindahl
Parent article: A decline in email spam?

So what alternative do you suggest?

Here in Germany, if you're handling mail on behalf of other people it is in many cases illegal to just throw stuff away that looks like spam. So you need to either shove suspicious mail into a »spam« folder – which the recipients usually look at only sporadically or not at all –, or not accept it at all in the first place, by sending error codes during the SMTP dialogue. This applies not only if you are an ISP, but also to many companies, universities, etc.

People will need to figure out how to read their MTAs' error messages. Otherwise, how are they going to deal with mistyped addresses, full recipient mailboxes, etc. – all of which can prevent mail from being delivered even in the absence of spam filtering and backscatter. Also, I personally have been a mail admin for 20 years or so, and I have never to my recollection seen a convincing fake error message from my own MTA.

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