🚀 go-pugleaf

>> The dumb cunts at Demon will do *nothing* to help.  The main thing
>> I want out of an ISP is a usable (i.e. spam-free) email service and
>> they aren't interested in providing it.  I have told them what I want
>> (server-side filtering more or less as Claranet does it; i.e. it's
>> certainly feasible because more competent ISPs manage it) and they
>> don't even respond.
> To be honest, if that's the sort of thing you're looking for, without
> being nasty or anything, you really probably are using the wrong ISP.  
> Demon has pretty much always been a techie oriented ISP, i.e. given
> the users the raw service in completeness as much as possible, and
> then let them handle the rest of it.

This is bollocks.  The way Demon does it is simply shuffling the work
and the performance hit onto their customers.  They provide *no way*
for users to have the headers of email scanned while still on the
server, with the decision to download or bounce being made using Demon's
CPU power; what they're insisting on is that you download the header,
at least, and use *your* CPU to make exactly the same decision after
wasting comms bandwidth and disk space getting it.  The average email
is about one-third header.  Which means that they provide no way to cut
your spam download by more than two-thirds.  Which is NOWHERE NEAR
enough if you've been using the same addresses for years, as I have.
The way things are going, even 99% won't be enough within a few months.

This is not being "techie", this is simply wasting the time and resources
of people who have the skills to operate a better solution which Demon
refuses to provide.

If I write filter rules that will work on my machine they'll work on
Demon's server too.  There is nothing specially technical about the
difference that requires somebody with *more* than ten years' experience
in the computer industry (which is how long I was in it) to operate.
All you need to know is the syntax of a message header and how to write
an egrep pattern.

There is also information that Demon has access to and none of its
customers do, which could be used as the basis for filtering.  E.g.
I would never want to accept anything from anybody who emailed more
than 10,000 Demon customers on the same day unless they were on a
whitelist I was in charge of (to take care of mailing lists).

Using more intelligent spam filtering internally, to zap the stuff as
early as possible, should make Demon's own system work more efficiently,
as there would be less traffic to handle; there have already been outages
due to spam overload.  I assume the reason they don't is that they've
contracted the design and maintenance of the mail service out to somebody
who has no financial incentive to achieve that sort of result.  Demon
used to be competent enough to respond to changes in their operating
environment, but I can't see them surviving the present upsurge in spam;
they must have made some irrecoverable fuckup in organizational structure.

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Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
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