Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 11:58:56AM -0500, Scott Lundgren wrote:
> 
> Guess I'll close the thread now. Thank you to Michael for suggesting using
> an alternate mail server while my hosting provider works through the issue &
> time of getting de-listed.

Yeah, that's a good idea - smarthosting.
 
> > >is, either, FWIW. Basically, you need to find another provider if they're
> > >too dumb or too slow or too greedy to keep spammers off their network.
> 
> Thank you Steve for posting the indepth information of how SPEWS and similar
> lists work. If there are tools to query on which hosting providers are
> spammer friendly is there then the inverse? a whitelist? it's not as
> important just a curiousity.

No, not that I'm aware of, though many mail admins use local whitelists
and what I call "offwhitelists", for ISP mail servers too big to block but
to dirty to whitelist altogether. I use mine to "tag" incoming messages
from those hosts for further quarantining and comparison with other local
whitelists, such as one containing email addresses.

Amit might know, though he generally focuses on tools, not BLs/WLs:

 http://spamotomy.com/

Part of the problem currently is that some spammers have taken to using
infected Windows machines as spam cannons; estimates range from a few
hundred thousand to several million hosts to choose from, and many
believe that the spammers are behind the creation of the worms/viruses
themselves. So what I've started doing is blocking on any host with a
generic rDNS (e.g., 'dsl-1-2-3-4.bigisp.net') rather than simply using
BLs like SPEWS and the SBL. But even that has taken literally months to
compile, as the spammers find new networks, I map them, and the race
continues. On the bright side, I've cut our daily spam load down from
around 1500/day in mid-May to roughly 20/day today. And I'm working on
some more rulesets that should cut that down by two-thirds. But I've not
yet had a day with no spam at all - that's my goal.

And all this has taken a ridiculous amount of time, so sorry I got my
back up about the "lazy, stupid admins" comment earlier upthread. I've
basically wasted the flower of my youth on these scumbags, and I'm pretty
annoyed about the whole thing ;)

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