Last week the blackhats that make up the '$pamAssassin PMC' sought to silence people who object to paid whitelists appearing in the core program which seek to give advantage to certain ESP's. vocal in the odd behaviour of the program. Namely those listed in whitelist 'Habeas' (a river flowing back to Return Path) are given a negative score to grease the wheels for the delivery of their UCE.
Now that the dust has settled the Barracuda Marketing Machine (who appear to have some financial connection with Apache - {citation: http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/company/open-source.php} and probably have people sitting on the PMC) takes the chance to rear it's ugly arse and begin redo the spin out it's own pay to spam whitelist "emailreg.org". emailreg.org may form part of a discussion in a spam list, but it is off topic for the Spamassassin list. Whilst Bob O Brian @ Barracuda trying to distance Barracuda from a direct connection may fool some, sensible people involved in anti-spam know full well this is a Barracuda product thinly garnished as something else. Sensible people also know that the Barracuda owner Micheal Perone is claimed to be a known former spammer: (citation: http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/objections/mperone.shtml) Barracuda Spam 'and virus' Firewall hardware (a cobbled together mix of free open source software and largely free rules/virus definitions) by default passes emailreg.org registered mail. There is *no* facility for the owner of the Barracuda to disable this without calling Barracuda Support. Contrast this to the Barracuda Whitelist, which has a check box to turn it on/off. It is fair to suggest this obmission is because Barracuda *don't want* users turning off emailreg.org. The Barracuda White List from Decemeber 2009 is posted elsewhere if you are interested in a 'who's who': http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email/browse_thread/thread/a9f757e7a2ee38d5# http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email/browse_thread/thread/2745f741838c23ea# http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email/browse_thread/thread/ce79b2349a83a2d5# The Barracuda machine is now trying to suggest that emailreg.org is of the calibre of Habeas. It is not. It is a pay to spam service and deserves no place in the Spamassassin ruleset OTHER than to INCREASE the score of mail. Whilst some halfbread moron has suggested giving emailreg.org a -100 score (compared to -4 for Habeas) the better rule is posted below. PEOPLE READING THIS LIST BE VERY AWARE DARK FORCES ARE AT WORK HERE TO DISCREDIT AND STRIKE VIEWS THAT EFFECT REVENUE. SPAMASSASSIN IS AS MUCH ABOUT MAKING MONEY AS IT IS ABOUT BLOCKING SPAM - KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN TO THE DARK FORCES THAT USE SPAMASSASSIN TO FACILITATE THE DELIVERY OF PAID FOR, JUNK COMMERCIAL MAIL. DON'T BE BLIND TO THE POWER WEILDED BY RETURN PATH, BARRACUDA AND OTHERS IN WINING AND DINING Daryl C. W. O'Shea. Suggested sensible Spamassassin Rule for emailreg.org: header __RCVD_IN_EMAILREG eval:check_rbl('emailreg-trusted', 'resl.emailreg.org.') header RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_0 eval:check_rbl_sub('emailreg-trusted', '127.0.\d+.0') describe RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_0 Sender in emailreg.org pay to spam list tflags RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_0 black hat header RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_1 eval:check_rbl_sub('emailreg-trusted', '127.0.\d+.1') describe RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_1 Sender in emailreg.org pay to spam list tflags RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_1 black hat score RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_0 30 score RCVD_IN_EMAILREG_1 30 -- This e-mail and any attachments may form pure opinion and may not have any factual foundation. Please check any details provided to satisfy yourself as to suitability or accuracy of any information provided. Data Protection: Unless otherwise requested we may pass the information you have provided to other partner organisations.