Date:         Fri, 26 Apr 2019 13:01:38 -0700
Reply-To:     "Michael A. Radtke" <wa7zpu@5BY9.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "Michael A. Radtke" <wa7zpu@5BY9.NET>
Subject:      Friday: Off Topic on Spam
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Hello,

The spammers are winning and have even created an industry that sell
products to block or delete spam.  In my opinion our focus should have
been on identifying and stopping the spammers, not blocking their
messages.  No spam filter can ever work.  It's like "whack a mole" in
that what ever we do, some spam gets through.  But, the worst side
effect is that there are plenty of false positives such as vanagon list
messages ending up in a spam folder, or worse, just deleted.

Over the years, I have had numerous problems with email providers
"helping me" by keeping spam out of my inbox.  From time to time this
has caused me various levels of inconvenience, and it even cost me
money on occasion.  I don't know how businesses can tolerate spam
filters and blockers if they do business by email.  What if a customer
places an order by email and the business never sees it?  This is not a
theory.  Recently one of Amazon's servers IP was erroneously or
maliciously added to some blacklists.  Any mail from the affected
server was deleted by the email providers who use those blacklists.
Almost all email providers use blacklists.

I am perfectly happy to press the delete key.  I don't want someone
deciding what email I can see.  I have fought this battle for years and
just like Hillary, I now run my own email server.  I see all of my
vanagon mail even if gerry gets blacklisted, or one of you in
frustration, includes a forbidden word in your vanagon list posting.

Thanks for listening,
Mike