I recently had to fight a major battle with *multiple* domain admins who have decided to use either Osirusoft or SPEWS as the basis for SPAM blocking.
/rant on/ Osirusoft advertises as a relay blocking service, but they also hook into the SPEWS level one list for SPAM blocking. You can try to contact Osirusoft if you feel they're blocking you in error, but they won't answer. SPEWS is a similar story. They are an aggressive anti-spam group. "That's good" you say? Wait. They have two levels of lists: level 1, which is advertised as known, confirmed spammers only. Then there's level 2, which is much more aggressive. They not only block known spammers, but also suspected spammers, and anyone *near* them in network-space and using the same ISP. Which means that if your IP is next to that of a known spammer, you may be on their level 2 list. They do this so that you, the innocent bystander, will complain to your ISP and hopefully get the spammer kicked off the air. And what if you can't do that? Too bad, so sad. . . go ahead and post to their newsgroup with your tale of woe, then duck because the $hit is gonna come flying at your head as a horde of self-righteous vigilantes call *you* names because your ISP has hosted a spammer and of course any decent netizen wouldn't do business with them. Since some, perhaps most, of us don't have any choice in the matter of our ISP, that's not a particularly helpful stance. AND (yes, there's more) if the SPEWS tactic of blacklisting neighboring ISP's on their level 2 list doesn't get the spammer off the air, they'll boost those neighboring IP's to the level 1 list. So, even though they *claim* that the level 1 list is confirmed spammers only, it ain't necessarily so. Now, add in the admins who've set up their systems to use Osirusoft/SPEWS who either can't or won't use safe lists (I've found lots of those in the last couple of months), and you find yourself spending a LOT of time on the phone talking with admins trying to convince them that you're not a spammer; helping your users figure out how to continue doing business with customers who can no longer receive email from your company; sometimes talking directly to those customers to see if *they* can help you bea^H^H^H^H^H^talk some sense into their network admin or ISP, etc. . . /rant off/ The moral of the story: RBL's are a good thing, but know the policies of the RBL that you're using or develop your own RBL, and know how to use a white list. Any questions? Darcy -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Hummert [mailto:hummertc@;noghri.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 1:57 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: RBL's Ok please explain. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:bounce-exchange-97309@;ls.swynk.com] On Behalf Of Chris Scharff Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 1:49 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: RBL's 97.25% of mail admins are too stupid to understand what an RBL actually is/does. I for one hope they continue to rely on 3rd parties to provide the functionality, otherwise I'll likely have to join you in phoning stupid admins to tell them why RBL $foo is costing their company business. -- Chris Scharff, MVP MCSE EMS Sales Engineer MessageOne 512.652.4500 x-244 > -----Original Message----- > From: Darcy Adams [mailto:Darcy.Adams@;gettyimages.com] > Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 3:42 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: RBL's > > > Still 3rd party. I was at a meeting at MS on Monday night > and the current stance on that is that they're "thinking > about possibly" including RBL support in a future release. > > Darcy > > -----Original Message----- > From: Matt Natkin [mailto:mnatkin@;natco-inc.com] > Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 1:50 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RBL's > > > Hey does exchange 2k have a rbl feature or is this 3rd party? _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:leave-exchange@;ls.swynk.com Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:leave-exchange@;ls.swynk.com Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ======================================================= This email and its contents are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not disclose or use the information within this email or its attachments. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately. Thank you. ======================================================= _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:leave-exchange@;ls.swynk.com Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
