Are Blacklists Killing More Than Spam?

from the debate-of-the-day dept

The debate of the day at the FTC spam summit seems to be about the legality of blacklists that block out certain messages that the anti-spam crowd assumes are associated with spammers. I really don't see how anyone can claim that such lists are illegal. They're just lists. No one is forced to use them. If your ISP chooses to use a blacklist, well, you have the option of changing your ISP. The real question, should be on those mail administrators who decide to use blacklists, without (1) realizing how those blacklists are determined or (2) letting end-users have a route around the blacklist. For example, I use a spam filter now that works quite well. However, I make sure I go through all of the email it blocks once a day to make sure nothing gets caught that shouldn't have. Yes, it's time consuming - but less so than dealing with all that spam sprinkled in with my regular email. I wouldn't however, feel comfortable with a spam solution that simply bounced or deleted messages it thought were spam. This is especially true since many of the blacklist providers don't have any way to contest a listing, and sometimes purposely aim to harm innocent bystanders who happen to use the same ISP as the spammer.

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