spam blocker tarpitting.

[Spuddy]

Hello,

It would be good to have a more feature rich and customizable tarpitting option. For example, choose which DNSBL's to lookup (checkboxes which to use).

Some block entire dynamic ranges, some only block known URLs in spam, some block known spamming IPs (honeypotted). etc.

Would be good to customize this based on needs.

[mrunkel]

If you're looking for that level of customization, Untangle is probably not the right solution for you.

Untangle's overall mission is to provide and effective, easy to install, easy to operate Internet protection solution.

The more dials and knobs we add, the more complex the product becomes.

If you like to fiddle with the knobs, I'd recommend ASSP, or just set up your own mail filter with custom scanning and RBLs.

In short, we've selected the best options based on our team's many years of experience in managing mail servers and combating SPAM. That's what you get when you install Untangle.

[johnsonx42]

you guys could stand to have a few more knobs to twist. I've seen you tell several people they ought to use ASSP if they want more customization options for spam blocking, but that's really overkill when they're just looking for a little more control. the whole reason I'm putting UT in as many clients as possible is because it does a lot of different things very well, and it makes things a LOT easier for me having a consistent product across multiple different clients. to have to say "well, if I really want to zero in on spam blocking at one client, I need to drop UT and put in ASSP, or put in both" somewhat defeats the original purpose.

in particular, the ability to define which RBL's are used for tarpitting and scoring would be really welcomed, and seems like a basic level of functionality that is currently missing. As I stated in another thread, I wanted to use Barracuda's RBL for scoring; I ended up using it at the mail server for connection blocking instead, and have found it extremely effective, blocking 5 times more connections than spamhaus or spamcop ever did (and I've got barracuda as the 4th RBL, so it only catches what the first 3 missed).

of course I do suspect there's not much emphasis put on improving the free Spam Blocker, when Commtouch is available for a fee. I'm not suggesting a grand evil conspiracy to cripple Spam Blocker so that people will have to buy Commtouch, just that there's little incentive to put in extra work to make Spam Blocker better than it is now. It's pretty good, plenty good enough to make UT worth using, but not so good as to eliminate the value of Commtouch (I do have one client about to eval commtouch because spam blocker is missing too much of a particular sort of spam that happens to be the vast majority of what the owner receives).

as to the OP's original question, most mail servers do support RBL's these days. Use the ones you like there, and leave UT's tarpitting off since you can't control it at all.

edit: the other big thing missing that makes UT's tarpitting option almost worthless is the lack of an IP and hostname whitelist. If UT starts blocking connections from a legitimate sender due to blacklisting, yes of course they need to get themselves un-blacklisted somehow; but in the meantime you need to be able to whitelist their IP(s) or mail server hostname(s) so that you can still receive their e-mails.