Provider filtering mail for you?

[triumph]

One of my hosts used to have spam assassin installed, but now they have basically obseleted that and gone to a more hardcore system that discards mail, phising attempts and the like before it is ever processed by the mail server. This takes the control out of the hands of the webmasters, and it is a bit worrisome to me.

What do you think about this and what would you do if your hosting provider did something similar? Basically they are going to be grading incoming mails and bouncing them if they meet certain treshholds. They claim the threshholds are not intrusive, but we still have no recourse of spam folder to get mis-guided mail from.

[monaghan]

Generally these things will reject mail that fails SORBS or similiar tests at the SMTP level, this reduced the load on the mail server as it doesn't have to then SPAM & AV check everything.

I implemented a similiar system on my servers and the load went down with no complaint from customers. In fact they seemed to appreciate having less SPAM to delete. My solution still uses spamassassin, just that it now has less to do.

[triumph]

Monaghan,

That is good to hear. The general concept did not bother me as much as it did some of their other customers. As long as proper bounce backs are sent to people who send legitimate mail allowing them to correct their issues, I will not worry about it too much.

[palefrost]

I dunno what if they bounce something that isnt spam mail. I would like an option so i can choose what i want bounced.

[monaghan]

SPAM filter rules are pretty good, generally they will let something through if there's any doubt and only reject something that is genuine spam.