[Mailman-Users] Commercial hosting for Mailman lists?

[Nigel Metheringham]

mstevens at imaginet.co.uk said:
> Interesting. I thought relaying via your ISP's mail host was
> practically compulsory for dialup accounts. I even know of ISPs for
> which I think that's the only way to send email. Does anyone know if
> this is a realistic view of the world, or am I sadly deluded by
> happening to have encountered a few unusual ISPs?

In the UK at least, responsible ISPs running free services or services 
with minimal user authentication, force all outgoing SMTP traffic to be 
via their servers - either by blocking other SMTP or by redirecting it 
to their servers.  This is done to prevent the whack-a-mole spamming 
attacks, where a set of direct spam is sent out from a throw away 
account, which is then closed down but the sender has by then moved on 
through other accounts.

Freeserve, who I used to work for, also has a set of adaptive filters 
on their servers looking for spam runs and blocking them before the 
results get out.  This can falsely identify mailing list mail, so the 
policy was that if you want to run something like a mailing list you 
should discuss it with the technical staff and they could arrange for 
your list to be passed by the filters.  I would expect other 
responsible ISPs to have a similar policy.

The internet is not the friendly place it once was and ISPs need to be 
suspicious of their customers or have their own reputation dragged 
through the mud.

	Nigel.

-- 
[ Nigel Metheringham                  Nigel.Metheringham at VData.co.uk ]
[ Phone: +44 1423 850000                         Fax +44 1423 858866 ]