On 12/12/09 3:52 PM, "Bob O'Brien" <bobr...@barracuda.com> wrote:
> I am "the whitelist guy" at Barracuda, so I work with them. > In my opinion, the $20 fee should be considered more like a CAPTCHA. > It's not simple "pay to play" either. Reports get investigated, and > delistings can happen. As I'm sure many of the volunteers here are > all too well aware, $20 won't cover a lot of investigation, and some > corporate sponsorship might be a great assist. Personally, I would be much less suspicious of the concept if there were an alternate way to get on the whitelist without paying. Something like "send in a form with your D&B number, wait four weeks, and during that time we'll be storing information about the relative spaminess/haminess of your outbound mailstream-- and no outbound stream at all is going to be considered suspicious. At the end of that time we'll send you an accept/reject notification. Or, for expedited whitelisting, send $20 to...." But the fact of the matter is, what we on the outside see: 1) Barracuda publishes a blocklist 2) Blocklist appears to be listing some arbitrary IP ranges 3) Solution to arbitrary listing is sending money to organization affiliated with Barracuda in some not-particularly-transparent way. Do you honestly not see why people might perceive that as questionable? If there were a no-charge method of getting added to the whitelist, I'd have done it at $DAYJOB. But as it is, it feels like paying the large Italian guy who comes around and says "Nice mail server ya gots here-- be a shame if something wuz to HAPPEN to it...." -- Dave Pooser Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com "...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!!" -- Bill McKenna
