[SURBL-Discuss] Whitelist Please

[Jeff Chan]

On Wednesday, September 1, 2004, 11:42:23 AM, Jeff Chan wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 1, 2004, 5:47:11 AM, Bitz Bitz wrote:
>> http://www.funnygreetings.com

>> Listed at WS_URI_RBL

>> X-Spam-Status: No, hits=5.1 required=10.0 tests=RATWR10_MESSID=0.111,
>>         WS_URI_RBL=5

>> Thanks,
>> -b.

> I've whitelisted: funnygreetings.com

> It belongs to euniverse.  I've added it to these other euniverse
> domains:

> euniverse.com
> flowgo.com
> skilljam.com
> cupidjunction.com
> dietingplans.com
> intelligentx.com
> netlaughter.com
> cutestuf.com
> madblast.com
> infobeat.com
> gossipflash.com
> funnygreetings.com

The reason for whitelisting all of them is that they all belong
to euniverse.  While I agree that these "spam to your friends
with jokes, greetings, prayers, whatever" sites are stupid and
highly abuse-prone, they do have some legitimate uses and should
probably not be blocked globally.

The other rationale is that euniverse is either a spamhaus or
not.  While it's possible they're highly clueless in their
subscription policies, it seems odd to me that one part of
their operation would be somewhat responsible, and another
part would be blatantly spamming.  Unless they've partitioned
their mail servers along those lines, they would risk getting
them all shut down by their ISP's AUP, and that would not make
business sense for them.

Also I place organizations that use their own mail servers in
a different class than those who are using zombies, or otherwise
illegally stealing services to deliver their mail, or are hosted
or sending from spam-friendly ISPs in rogue nations that we are
all already aware of.  Anyone who has a fixed mail server can be
trivially and much more efficiently blocked using a regular RBL
and they probably don't need to be in a SURBL.  They would be
more efficiently handled in a RBL such as sbl.spamhaus.org.  If
the SBL sighting is correct, perhaps euniverse already is.

That all said, I'm willing to consider taking flowgo.com off
the whitelist if people agree that domain is more spammy than
legitimate.

Does euniverse use any zombies, stolen services or spam-friendly
ISPs?

Jeff C.