Sometimes a problem is so bad, the worst thing you can do is talk about it.
Worse than that, however, is talking about a problem when you are completely uninformed on the topic.
While spam volumes are at historic lows, the amount of email that traverses the Internet that is unsolicited rubbish was still 68 percent at the end of 2011. But is anti-spam becoming more of a problem than a solution?
That’s what RedOrbit.com’s Peter Suciu thinks. First he assails what he calls “reactive filtering,” the time-honored DNSBL that keeps the worst spammers far, far from your inbox. In particular he calls out the spamcop.net service and errs in stating that the spamcop.net service sends the rejected sender an email; it is the actual server using the DNSBL that might issue such a warning. My hunch is that Mr. Suciu has never run a mail server.
Suciu then questions the necessity of the CAPTCHA challenge-response test “proactive filtering” that prevents comment sections from becoming a spam magnet. I checked my Akismet stats for this blog and it, using CAPTCHA technology, prevented 3,658 unwanted, irrelevant (and mostly automated) comments last year alone. The clincher was when I looked for a way to contact RedOrbit.com, their response form has, yep… a CAPTCHA.
Spam won’t be going away soon, but there is never a good time to let your guard down.
