Can someone from SORBS contact me offlist?

Sun Jul 12 16:53:48 UTC 2009

On Jul 11, 4:58 pm, "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patr... at ianai.net> wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2009, at 5:37 PM, Brielle Bruns wrote:

> P.S. Anyone looking to find a good DNSBL, I would recommend Al
> Iverson's web page, <http://www.dnsbl.com/>.  Hrmmm, AHBL is not
> listed there.  Al's pretty clueful about such things and checks all
> the major BLs in use.  Did you ask him not to rate your service?

No, neither Brielle nor Andrew (back in the day) have ever asked me to
avoid rating AHBL.

The fact that I haven't published DNSBL stats about AHBL should not be
used as a data point to indicate that there's something wrong with it.
I have a strong respect for Brielle and the other folks involved in
the SOSDG.

If I ran AHBL, there are things I might do differently than they do.
But that's okay, that's allowed, and can be said of nearly any BL out
there.

I haven't personally tested AHBL in a couple of years now, so I can't
speak to its current effectiveness level. When I did use it, there was
nothing that made me concerned about it, nothing that made me think it
would be a bad choice for a BL to use.

That being said, allow me to strongly second your recommendation
against using SORBS. I think it is very poorly and questionably run,
full stop, by somebody who gets too heated and too drawn into
personality conflict, and whose ability to effectively stop spam is
negatively impacted as a result.

Brielle, i certainly respect that you have a right to defend somebody
that you consider to be a friend, but please do me a favor and don't
discount what I know you have personally observed, and consider what
some other folks have gone through when dealing with SORBS. We're not
all spammers and cranks and lunatics. Some reasonable people can and
do think SORBS is horribly broken.

By the way, those of you who disagree with SORBS or are tired of
running into false positive or unfair listings, I strongly recommend
doing two things:
1. Contact the admin using SORBS to block your mail, and politely ask
them to reconsider, based on the false positive and personality
conflict issues know about SORBS.
2. Publish a very polite and rant-free page on your website indicating
why you think it is a bad idea to use it.

Leave angry emotion out of it. Skip the cries of conspiracy theory and
extortion and defamation. Very simply relate your experiences and what
you know about SORBS. Nothing more, nothing less. You'll be doing a
favor for the NEXT admin who runs into the same issue, who will have
more reasonable online experiences to link to when explaining to that
last SORBS-using admin why it's a poor choice.

By the way, I've found this to be a very successful process. In the
US, SORBS is not used by any of the top hundred ISPs. It's only in use
by small hobby sites and tiny ISPs, and in most cases, the email
administrator picked it and other BLs fairly randomly, without giving
any consideration to what choices they're making. A reasonable request
for reconsideration has a good chance of success.

Regards,
Al Iverson

-- 
Al Iverson on Spam and Deliverability, see http://www.spamresource.com
News, stats, info, and commentary on blacklists: http://www.dnsbl.com
My personal website: http://www.aliverson.com   --   Chicago, IL, USA