On 21 Jun 2015, at 10:33, Jered Floyd wrote:
Richard,
The BRBL may have listed the entire /24 that includes your sending
IPs.
Painful experience has shown that Barracuda won't hear your requests
for
delisting, and the listing may never go away.
I believe you've got it in one. I heard back from a colleague on the
same /24 (though not the same address!) and he had a client with a bad
WordPress install that was generating spam.
That seems to make this EmailReg situation even more egregious -- if
they're really blocking whole networks based on a single IP then it
really is a protection scheme operated (opaquely) by Barracuda. "Pay
us money if you want mail to get through to our customers; we'll
blacklist you arbitrarily otherwise." How can this possibly be legal
under US racketeering laws?
I'm not defending Barracuda specifically, as I have long believed them
to be an opportunistic, ethics-free, low-quality organization selling
overpriced garbage to people too desperately clueless to know better...
However, even carelessly run blacklists of IPs for email have been
protected in US courts by 2 things:
1. Blacklist operators are not doing any actual blocking, their users
are. Senders on "collateral damage" IPs are free to appeal to the actual
sites rejecting their mail for exceptions and any
competently-administered site will be able to do so. Any DNSBL operator
is akin to a movie reviewer: they don't directly control anyone's
behavior, they merely influence those who choose to pay them heed.
2. Virtually every US law explicitly touching Internet filtering (COPPA,
COPPA2, CAN-SPAM, etc.) has included some "safe haven" provision for
those implementing and using filtering tools in good faith. The
interpretation of what constitutes "good faith" has been extremely
broad, essentially meaning that if Barracuda has a theory that listing
innocents in the vicinity of spammers helps avoid future spam, they
don't need to actually have evidence of its validity or weight any
tangible damage against theoretical benefit.
The flipside of this de facto immunity is that you are free to point out
to those who reject your mail due to Barracuda's shoddy advice that
Barracuda gives shoddy advice for which they do not deserve much
attention or any money.
