[Novalug] Tangent - Re: Aggressive Spam Rejection with Postfix

ethan@757.org ethan@757.org
Mon Mar 3 23:14:21 EST 2008


> filtering my logs, I show:
> # awk '/reject/ && /sorbs/' maillog* | wc -l
> 293
> # awk '/reject/ && /spamhaus/' maillog* | wc -l
> 150
> Seems useful to me.

Is SORBS rejection first? Perhaps Spamhaus would have rejected the same 
messages.

> It's free.  For better service maybe can donate some time?
> http://www.de.sorbs.net/helpwanted.shtml

No, I'd rather devote time to getting people to leave their service. I 
totally understand how it goes, you start a project and then loose 
interest after the fame is gone. But in their case it has a very negative 
impact on businesses, and many of the people that seem to use their 
service don't realize they are doing so.

> It's a difficult battle, and I praise anyone on the good side.  What's
> good for someone, is not good for another, but the battle continues and
> some innocents are scared along the way.

I hate spam as much as anyone. But I know for a fact that there has 
_NEVER_ been spam from our netblock in the past 3 years, and I've given up 
hope at ever getting it unblocked from their service. Like I said, the end 
result was standing up mail servers at a different data center and 
forwarding all mail traffic over there. Going to the ISP and saying "Well 
these loosers at this one service have us incorrectly listed and well, yea 
can you give us another block that has never been dialup internet" seems 
wasteful.

And when I looked into it, I found others with the same issue. They don't 
update their stuff. And they incorrectly list people.

> I hope they get more well deserved help and live.

Yea, in the meantime they create headache and heartache for ISPs and end 
users doing the right thing recycling address space.

> Extortion?  If true, save the evidence and achieve financial freedom.

I didn't give them money, but since people volunteerly sign up to use 
their blacklists, I don't know if you could go after them for extortion.

Their policy was (but I don't know now, based upon reading those who had 
issue) that if you request to be removed it might happen in the next 60 
days, but if you want off right now you had to donate $90 or so to some 
stupid chairty for some spam related cause... and then they would remove 
you immediately. Except the cause was already won/solved. The one account 
that I read about-- they just disputed it with paypal and got the money 
back.

I hate.. and I mean HATE spam just as much as anyone. I use pine so I can 
quickly delete it on my personal accounts... but when it comes to SORBS 
I'm no fan and would advise everyone to avoid it.





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