Re: Blocking mail from other countries

Devdas Bhagat wrote:
> On 15/06/04 13:27 -0400, Kevin Castle wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>What about header checks with regexp like the following?
>>
>>/^From:.*@(*\.ar|*\.bm|*\.br)/ DROP
>>/^Message-ID:.*@(*\.ar|*\.bm|*\.br)/ DROP
>>/^Return-Path:.*@(*\.ar|*\.bm|*\.br)/ DROP
>>/^Received::.*@(*\.ar|*\.bm|*\.br)/ DROP
>
> s/DROP/DISCARD/

Anyway, why silently discard the mail? If you *know*
this is a virus/worm or some spam sent by a proxy-raping
spamware or whatever, it may be a good idea to discard it.
But if there's ANY chance for a doubt, you don't want to
drop it silently. This is exactly the state of the global
email system which noone wants it to go: when your email
starts disappearing in one or anothe blackhole thanks to
various DISCARDs here and there, and you don't know where
it come to and where it gets discarded, you don't know
whenever it was your message or reply to your message
(which you're waiting urgently) which was disappeared
and so on.

If you don't want to receive mail from certain countries,
don't - it's your choice. But do TELL them that you don't
want to receive their mail. Listening to someone's speech
but ignoring it is even more rude than refusing to listen.
People hope you're listening to them (since you had no
indication that you're not), and expect some your reaction.
When it does not come, the speaker is in strange situation,
where he does not know whenever you heard him or not, and
if not why, or just does not want to talk with him.

To summarize: NEVER, ever, discard the mail silently.
This is the death of email. There should be VERY STRONG
reason for such a discarding - when you're SURE the other
end is not interesting to see your (or whatever else)
responses - such as email worms or spam-sending trojans.

Please, don't kill the email even worse than spammers
are killing it.

/mjt