postgrey question

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

On Jun 2, 2005, at 8:49 AM, Kirk Strauser wrote:

> On Thursday 02 June 2005 06:54, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>
>
>> If people keep accepting broken implementation as the status quo,  
>> we're
>> going to keep getting people who leave broken implementations in  
>> place.
>>
>
> I have to agree with you on that one.  Greylisting is no more non- 
> standard
> than saying "I'm kind of having problems right now; please try again
> later".  If a machine breaks on greylisting, then any number of other
> unintentional problems with also break it.  On the positive side,  
> so many
> servers are adopting greylisting that I suspect servers that can't  
> handle
> it will get fixed rather quickly.


That is not the issue though.  Lots of servers, especially public  
mail providers,  have tried greylisting and rejected it because   
their user base complains that mail is delayed and they want to know  
that their mail that their client, support people, etc just sent to  
them will get there quickly, not 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, or  
whatever, later.  The biggest problems with greylisting are not the  
broken servers who do not retry -- you can work around them -- it is  
that the incoming mail is delayed and users don't like it.  Now if  
you have a mail server just for yourself or a special userbase this  
may not apply to you.  And this is why combining greylisting with  
spamassassin or other antispam software is appealing -- you only grey  
list those mails you have a good suspicion are actually spam.  You do  
not greylist all mails and so your userbase is happy since their  
expected email is not delayed.

Chad