[clug] spamsum usage in the real world

[Alex Satrapa]

On 15 Nov 2006, at 14:34, Nemo wrote:

> ... especially many business users who are more likely
> to have have many short-lifetime email conversations than personal
> users, the delays would be unacceptable.

When done properly, greylisting only affects the initial message from  
a host. After that, the originating host is "whitelisted" and the  
remainder of the conversation occurs without any artificial delays.  
You don't need to greylist if the sender is approved by relevant SPF  
records - the policy manager for your mail server should sort that  
out ("If approved by SPF, it gets through, otherwise greylist it if  
we haven't seen it, otherwise resort to RBL/XBL").

The only point of greylisting is buying time so that other measures  
can take effect. Greylisting all new hosts for 15 minutes may be the  
difference between receiving spam/viruses/whatever, and dropping it  
due to the RBL being updated in the meantime, for example. That's the  
theory anyway.

Alex