[SHAME] Spam Rats

Thu Jan 10 04:55:47 UTC 2013

On 1/9/2013 9:58 PM, Julian DeMarchi wrote:
> There is an anti-spam company called Spam Rats[1]....
> They have listed a /24 of my companies for lack of PTRs in the range

I find SpamRats' lists helpful in spam filtering as a low scoring list
because it puts some new emitters which haven't had time to build up bad
reputation "over the top". Having said that, they actually have 3 lists,
and only one of those 3 lists involves listing IPs ONLY based on "no
PTR". They also have an "all" list, but they document on their web site
how to query the "all" list, but then ignore those return codes
indicating the "no PTR" list.

That is how I use them because I didn't need their "no PTR" list since
it would be redundant for me since I was already checking for "no PTR"
myself... and I didn't want to score twice on that one attribute.

But if your information is accurate and I understand you correctly, then
I agree that they shouldn't list the whole /24 in their PTR list if SOME
of those IPs *do* have PTRs.

(Actually, I wasn't aware that any of their lists involved /24 blocks.
They should probably be more clear about that on their web site.)

On their web site, on the http://www.spamrats.com/about.php page, under
the heading, "NEW - SpamRats All", they describe this method of querying
their "all" list, but ignoring their PTR list's particular return code.
I think they made THAT suggestion FOR VERY GOOD REASON. Therefore, you
could use this to your advantage by going back to whichever recipient
blocked your mail and say... "hey, you're NOT using spamRATS in a manner
that they suggested", then point them to the section I referenced and
explain that many don't use their "no PTR" list since most spam filters
already do that. Maybe that could be a short term solution for you?
(probably better than nothing)

-- 
Rob McEwen
http://dnsbl.invaluement.com/
rob at invaluement.com
+1 (478) 475-9032