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On a normal weekday, I will typically receive some 20 to 40 messages at my Applelinks e-mail address -- perhaps quarter of them spam. Yesterday, I received three messages, none of them spam. Today, so far, I have received one message. Applelinks has hooked up its incoming e-mail pipeline to the ORBZ spam domain blacklist system, and while not much spam is getting through, the problem is that apparently not much legitimate email traffic is getting through either. It's one of those "the operation was a success, but the patient died," or "we were obliged to destroy this village in order to save it" scenarios. The ORBZ RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) filters check a database that stores a list of machines which are open SMTP relays. These relays are, or are deemed likely to be, used as conduits for sending unsolicited bulk email. By accessing this list, system administrators are allowed to choose to accept or deny email exchange with these servers. Spam is bad, but in my humble opinion, (which does not necessarily reflect Applelinks policy) the sort of spam filtering that ORBZ blacklisting initiates, which blocks entire server domains, is several magnitudes worse, and if it becomes the norm, it will mean the death of email as a useful and dependable medium of general communication. When you drop a letter in the snail mail box, your 99.x percent assured that it will reach its intended destination, notwithstanding the fact that it may well arrive along with a wad of ads and flyers and other junk mail. Domain filtering of email is analogous to banning mail from an entire state or country because junk mail originates there. It stops the junk all right, but that the cost of defeating the purpose of the service. In an anti-spam diatribe that I reviewed here yesterday, Michael Fraase said that he personally cconfigures his e-mail client to filter mail from domains such as HotMail and AOL and Yahoo! directly to the dumpster. That's his prerogative, but seems to me like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. A lot of people I want to hear from use Hotmail and AOL and Yahoo!. Michael suggested that people get a "real email address" if they don't want to be filtered. Well, I have a real email address, that I pay for, for my ISP. Guess what? ORBZ blacklists it, and the test messages are said to mysel here at Applelinks disappeared into the cyber-ether. They don't even bounce back. Who knows? Yesterday, messages sent through Apple's mac.com SMTP server started being rejected by the ORBZ system, while they had worked earlier in the week. Last evening, I tried sending messages to Applelinks using the Yahoo!, yifan.net, MyRealBox, and HotPop SMTP servers, all from accounts with return addresses on those servers. All of them require either POP authentication before sending mail or SMTP authentication. None got through, presumably because ORBZ has blacklisted them, although the MyRealBox message did not bounce back. Who knows? ORBZ suggests that legitimate email users whose mail is getting bounced by ORBZ lobby their ISP or email service to eliminate open relays. Yeah, right! Like more than a fraction of users are going to go to that hassle. I repeat, if this becomes the norm, it's the end of email as a dependable medium of communication. If people become doubtful that their messages will be accepted, they will just stop sending email. ORBZ says "For installations that have users sending mail from all around the world (such as many web hosting companies),SMTP AUTH is an excellent solution for avoiding open relay." Well, my ISP requires SMTP authentication. So does iTools' mac.com. Yahoo! and HotPop require POP authentication (you have to check your incoming email box before you can send mail). They are all still getting blocked by the ORBZ blacklist. Frankly, this sucks. And unless everyone decided to go Christmas shopping yesterday, it's why there is no Moore's Mailbag column today. Until this situation is resolved, you can still reach me (i think) at: Another workaround is to create an Applelinks webmail account would be to create an Applelinks webmail account here. From this account readers can email the Applelinks staff and also check mail from their own ISP account.
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