Jon Haworth wrote:
Scott,
[snip tale of woe]
You can't really blame the ISPs who subscribe to these
spam-blocking servers.
Your ISP could whitelist the IP of the WDVL list server rather than
checking it against a blacklist.
No, actually, they can't. When I spoke to the senior tech at my ISP, he said
that the second-level tech who had unblocked the list on my first issue
ticket had erred, that is against policy and can result in the list being
_permanently_ blocked. Apparently it is something to do with their contract
with the service, and it is _not_ uncommon among such services, so moving to
another would not necessarily change anything.
Linda, the wdvltalk list admin with whom I communicated on this issue,
confirmed this from their end. Repeated unblocking of blocked servers can
result in permanent blocking without recourse. Although I have insufficient
information to positively aver that it is the case, my presumption would be
that most such services would operate in a similar fashion.
If they can't, they're using a seriously poor spam filtering system
(I don't know of *any* that don't allow whitelists, even freebie
client-side ones). If they can but won't, it would seem their
procedures are more important to them than their customers.
Either way I'd be asking myself if I was happy to keep paying a
company that wasn't delivering the service I needed.
Actually, they provide superlative, dependable, reasonably priced service,
which is why I've had ADSL with them since 1998. Their service was _not_ at
fault. EVERY other list to which I subscribe (about 25) continued to arrive
without issue. The problem was with Lyris, which provides list services to
wdvltalk and many others, as Linda confirmed when she said that others of
their lists hosted by Lyris were also being blocked. My ISP is not at fault,
and not to be blamed, because a particular user's source servers have issues
which cause them to be blocked.
They are attempting to protect their subscribers and their
servers from inundation by the flood of spam which would
otherwise overwhelm them.
True, and that's a laudable plan. However, their execution obviously
leaves a little to be desired.
The fault, IMHO, lies with the spam-blocking services to
which they subscribe.
The root cause of your problem does appear to be an over-zealous or
badly-administered blacklist, but it's your ISP that's chosen to use
that list.
Well, no, that is not the root cause of the problem. The root cause is that
the Lyris list servers had issues which put subscibers and their ISPs at
risk of exposure to threat. If, for example, their servers had left open one
or more email relay ports, CBL was entirely correct in blacklisting them. As
I stated (in the portion of the above quote that you omitted), my beef with
the blacklist was that they (apparently) didn't provide the necessary
information to the blocked service's technical people to be able to quickly
and easily resolve the issue, and that is a different matter entirely.
Let's pretend:
You hire a firm of builders to renovate a room in your house. They
have people on their staff who can do everything apart from the
plastering, which they subcontract to a specialist company. You go
off on holiday while the work is being done.
When you come back, the room is perfect in every respect apart from
the plastering, which is a mess. Who is the target of your wrath? The
builders you employed to do the job, or the sub-contractors they
hired to do the plastering?
Next time you want a room redecorating, you call the same builders
for a quote. They indicate they'll be using the same plasterers. Do
you hire them again?
Your ISP is sub-contracting spam filtering to a company that isn't
doing it according to your requirements. If your list traffic gets
blocked again, will you be paying your ISP next month?
False analogy. The ISP is contracting with the blacklist to protect _their_
servers, not my Inbox. Furthermore, the "sub-contractor" has _not_ failed in
execution of its role, as the "pretend" plasterers did; it is doing
precisely what it is supposed to do: Block servers which have issues falling
within its area of responsibility.
<<::SNIP::>>
Again, the fundamental issue in all of this was that (a) Lyris had one or
more issues which caused them to be blacklisted, and (b) that apparently
information regarding these issues and their resolution was insufficiently
or inefficiently communicated by the blacklist service to the host server
technical personnel to facilitate their coming into compliance. The fact
that I am now receiving list mail again seems to indicate, at least, that
they have resolved those issues, for the nonce. None of what I have
described has been intended to imply that my ISP was in error in its
actions, nor, save the one factor described above, was CBL. The fault lies
with the Lyris servers, and if they permit their systems to go out of
compliance again, I imagine that they will be blocked again. Such is the
nature of the beast.
Cheers,
Scott
"Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently
programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." - Isaac Asimov
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