re: reverse DNS and emails. There are well documented and fairly simple tasks to reduce spam. requiring rdns, using rbls and blocking certain IP blocks goes a long way. The biggest problem however are outfits like microsoft whose hotmail/msn properties have undocumented logic which confirm reception of the message at the SMTP/821 level but then proceed to discard the email instead of delivering it to the person's inbox (or spam folder). Because they are unfortunatly popular, this means that sending email to users of those systems has become untrustable since you need to phone them to ensure they got the email. And it is impossible to talk to a "postmaster" at hotmail to know why hotmail sometimes/often doesn't like your emails even though you abide by standard rules. (rdns, spf etc) Spam getrs you more than you bargained for, but you still get your legitimate emails. But hotmail/MSN discard legitimate emails without warning and that makes SMTP untrustable and this is a far more serious issue. The original mantra of either discarding the email during SMTP conversation, or sending a non delivery notification should be strictly adhered to. When email becomes unreliable (thanks to microsoft), people stop using it.