MAPS seems to already be cutting off access, whether intentionally or due to
problems beyond their control. For the last two days I have not been able to
load <http://www.mail-abuse.org/>. Also, every time I look at the Communigator
SMTP monitor for my SIMS server there's at least one, if not several,
connections waiting for a blacklist DNS response (I'm only using the MAPS
lists). All of this brings a few questions to mind.
Given that www.mail-abuse.org seems to be MIA, can anyone tell us where to
find information about the new policies and getting a MAPS subscription?
What does SIMS do if a blacklist query times out? Does it allow or reject the
SMTP connection (assuming it didn't time out waiting for the blacklist DNS
response)?
If MAPS is having trouble with connectivity, is it wise to start paying them
$200/yr for an uncertain level of service?
On 07/17/01 at 08:56, Bill Cole wrote:
> I suspect that it is MAPS' only option. In April MAPS eliminated half
> of their jobs (including mine and my entire department) for financial
> reasons. I don't see any reason to believe that MAPS' financial state
> has improved since, and they still have 3 lawsuits pending, which
> means bleeding money extra-swiftly. (i.e. to lawyers)
This and the performance of the MAPS servers over the last couple of days
makes me a little nervous about recommending to my employer that we should pay
any sort of subscription fee for a service that my boss has been blissfully
unaware of to this point. Although, if he starts to see an increase in the
amount of spam that gets through to him, he may be willing to shell out some
dough to make it stop.
> >Besides, about 80% of the spam I see now is not being blocked by
> >MAPS anyway. I have 722 spam messages in the last 25 days. I see
> >0-5 emails blocked most days and up to 20 blacklist blocks on "big"
> >days in my logs. Given that easily half of these spams are hitting
> >my internal blacklist of China Telecom (61.128.0.0 - 61.143.255.255
> >202.96.0.0 - 202.111.255.255) I don't see the subscription being
> >worth my money. What I will do is scour my logs for all the ips
> >that have hit the blacklists this year and add them manually into
> >the blacklist list.
>
> This surprises me, if you are using RSS and DUL. The RBL itself
> catches very little for me, but the other two lists do real work.
That has been my experience as well.
> >In principal less than $20 a month is not a lot of money, certainly
> >not for an ISP or a business with lots of employees... but I would
> >be hard pressed to extort $200/year out of my friends and family
> >simply to pay for a slight decrease in incoming spam.
>
> MAPS has been pretty clear elsewhere that they will be making
> accommodations for hobbyist/personal systems. Paul Vixie has said
> that no one would be turned away for lack of ability to pay. (Hmmm...
> I wonder if since he laid me off he'd be willing to give me free
> access... I suppose I need to ask) My suspicion is that the core
> needs for MAPS are to make sure that all users have made an explicit
> usage agreement AND to get a few big freeloading ISP's to start
> actually paying for their spam-control. MAPS can't cut costs much by
> reducing how many users they have, but they can make up some of the
> expense if they can get big commercial providers to pay and it may be
> legally helpful to have every direct user sign a contract that
> clearly defines what the MAPS lists are.
Is there some place other than the www.mail-abuse.org site where we can see
what the new policies are?
Christopher Bort | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Webmaster, Global Homes | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://www.globalhomes.com/> | PGP public key available on request
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