[ILUG] [OT] topica for email

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Anthony (ant at elivefree.net):

[Topica:]

> The biggest drawback is that some badly configured mail servers have 
> them (wrongly) blacklisted as being spammers. 

I have no personal knowledge of the matter, but the charge is widely
accepted among regulars on the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, for
whatever that's worth -- perhaps unfairly, for all I know, or based on
conditions once true but no longer.  (I'm a bit fuzzy on this matter,
having not read that newsgroup for a long time.)  For one thing, it is
alleged that, at least at one time, people's addresses were added to
Topica mailing lists without a three-way handshake.  (That is,
subscriber initiates a request, list management sends back a notice that
such a request has been received and needs to be confirmed, and finally
the subscriber sends back a matching confirmation.)  This is called
operating a "dirty list".

I suspect this charge is and was true -- and that would make them
conclusively a spamhaus, by any reasonable measure.  (It is alleged that
they are in fact a huge, major spam source through exactly that
mechanism.)

Here are files that talk about particulars on other matters:

http://www.dolphinwave.org/spam/topica.com.txt
http://www.evilemail.com/faq.html
http://hostasaurus.com/spamblock.php
http://www.krusty-motorsports.com/spamlog/archives/2002_12.html

I don't block Topica by IP netblock or domain name, and wouldn't
recommend doing so -- but not out of any regard for that company, but
rather because that variety of blocking is a fairly obsolete aproach.

-- 
Cheers,              "Plus ça change...."
Rick Moen            http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/pictures/1861-versus.2004.jpeg
rick at linuxmafia.com