[Gllug] Re: www.spews.org - spamming blacklist

[Jason Clifford]

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, David Damerell wrote:

> However, you're also perpetrating a basic untruth about this sort of
> operation. SPEWS do not block anyone's mail. The only reason they can
> have an effect is that a significant number of systems _agree_ with
> them that their identification of tainted netblocks is reasonable, and
> _those systems_ - not SPEWS - block people's mail.

That arguement would be totally true but for the fact that one of the 
underlying assumption is false - not every sys admin who uses SPEWS 
understands how extreme a RBL it it. I've come across people using it in 
the past who ddi not know that it blocks netblocks including totally 
innocent users as well as the (presumed) guilty.

I do agree that there is a case for netblock blacklisting however I 
believe that SPEWS takes this much too far - blocking /16 networks is just 
wrong. I also believe that just general blacklists should be for a very 
limited time only and then drop down to blacklisting just the hosts 
that are actually sending SPAM.

For my own RBL (spamsource.ukpost.com) I only list those hosts that 
transmitted spam I received to my servers.

Jason Clifford
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