
SURBL - zoowar
http://www.surbl.org/
======
SageRaven
Great! Yet another blacklist to cause collateral damage for us poor email
admins.

If there's one type of person than invokes homicidal rage in my otherwise
fairly mellow personality is the arrogant email admin who won't allow an
exception so a person on one of my RBL-listed servers can communicate with one
using his servers. The worst is flat-out rejecting email (as opposed to using
scoring) because the sender's mail server is listed on a single RBL of the
fifty or so that are out there. It's not like the users have any knowledge of
the ugly politics involved with the RBL vigilantism that goes on behind the
scene of the mail servers, so in the end they are the ones who suffer
pointlessly.

I once talked to an admin who had the balls to be _proud_ that he forced one
of his employer's satellite offices to capitulate and get removed from all
RBLs so they could communicate with corporate. Let me tell you... I've never
communicated with a more self-righteous prick.

Yeah, yeah, I know: you have the right to do whatever the hell you want on
_your_ mail servers. However, when you take the supposed high road by denying
proven legitimate email due to a listing on some 3rd party list, you're being
a major asshat.

We can achieve 99.5% effective filtering with per-mailbox statistical
filtering. There's no reason to create yet more lookup traffic dedicated to
the spam problem.

The entire RBL concept is broken. Please don't add to this ecosystem.

(Note to the creator, admins, and users of backscatterer.org: There's a
special hell for each and every one of you.)

~~~
mike-cardwell
Email would be a _dead_ technology without the existence of RBLs.

~~~
SageRaven
Hyperbole much?

I've run a few mail servers in my time, never having used RBLs, and they do
just fine with statistical filtering. I've used email services (and did admin
work for a couple), and had nothing but trouble with RBL-related issues.

RBLs are run by people with political axes to grind, and RBLs are used by
people who haven't been burned enough to know any better.

~~~
mike-cardwell
No hyperbole. You've clearly not run any large mail systems.

------
latitude
Oookay... and how is me sending out spam with my competitor's website in it
handled?

~~~
saurik
Yeah. I had a similar idea a while back (as I noticed that 99% of my personal
spam filter rules on a web forum I was running were URL filters for scam
companies), and then immediately realized that attack and shelved the idea. I
feel like the answer to this question, if they have even thought it through
(which they probably haven't), should be the first thing on the site, right
after the paragraph that describes what they do.

~~~
danielharan
The URL should only be part of the signal. There might also be legal remedies
to you if your competitor is spamming people with your URL.

