Don't Just Block Spam, Slow It Down

Email

from the that's-the-ticket... dept

This isn’t particularly new, but it looks like a number of anti-spam firms are picking up on the general concept of “gray listing” spam, where rather than just filtering spam messages, they purposely try to slow the rate at which spam messages are sent. As the blurb at Infoworld notes, this act of “meddling” feels deeply satisfying. Of course, what happens when a perfectly legitimate emailer is labeled as a spammer by such a system, and their own emails slow to a crawl? It seems like that could be a bit worse than just filtering out legitimate emails — and there have been lawsuits over just false filters. If emails are being purposely delayed, lawsuits may fly. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past spammers to figure out some way to take advantage of these systems to slow down others’ email as well.