> What's wrong with ORBs? Let me tell you a story.
>
> ... We later found out that Earthlink (their dialup
> provider) was using ORBs to block port 25 on their routers.
> oops. This costed us a few customers before we figured it out.
That's a problem with Earthlink! ORBS never told, asked, or suggested to Earthlink to
do that.
Actually, Earthlink is probably doing a GOOD thing, by preventing its customers from
spamming. FYI, they now block access to ALL SMTP servers, so you would have the same
problem today, without ORBS being involved.
> simply because no one bothered to tell us we were listed,
ORBS sends E-mail to the servers that it tests. However, if you don't have a
postmaster@[IP Address] account that will accept mail, there is no way it can get mail
to you. It's up to you to have a valid postmaster account.
> I have some fundamental rights issues with them:
> 1. Who are they to tell me if I can relay or not? Of course,
> we don't, but that isn't the point.
They aren't saying you can't relay. They are just pushing you to close your open
relay. I get a lot of spam from people that run open relays, and I would much prefer
not to get the spam. Most people feel the same way (surveys agree with me on this).
> 2. ORBs subscribers use the list in ways they may not have intended.
> Earthlink uses it to block all traffic from a "relay" site.
Yes, and Earthlink could choose to blacklist you even if you aren't on ORBS. That's
an Earthlink policy you don't like.
> 3. ORBs incorrectly listed one of our IPs as an open relay, when
> it was not.
I've never heard of that happening, but mistakes certain can happen. So what? If you
sent E-mail from such a server to me, I'd see "ORBS:" before the subject.
> 4. Now we have to proactively track if any of our blocks are
> listed so we don't get blindsided again. One more daily task
> we should not have to do.
Just set up your servers to follow RFCs, and you should get the notices. I got one
here when we first set up our mail server and had it as an open relay.
> I guess it just comes down to that I don't appreciate yet another
> entity telling me what I can and cannot do.
Then you must hate Earthlink. <G>
--
-Scott
Declude: Anti-virus and Anti-spam solutions for IMail. http://www.declude.com
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