Dear member of the SURBL community:
As a valued member of the SURBL community, we are contacting you to provide an update on changes that SURBL has made to its licensing and usage policies, in particular for rsync data feed access. SURBL is dedicated to helping the community detect unsolicited messages, and trust the service is working effectively for your organization.
It's important that your organization is aware of these licensing changes to avoid any service interruptions. We are providing you this notice to ensure you are aware of the policy changes, and can help your organization to make a proactive decision.
The primary objective of the SURBL project is to ensure that SURBL remains effective, of the highest quality, and sustainable over the long term. The goal is to provide a tool that remains available and effective for the Internet community to control the spiraling growth of unsolicited messages, particularly those sent using botnets. As such, SURBL is following a model that has proven successful in gaining the support of subscribers from its user community. The new licensing policy requires organizations exceeding 1,000 email users or 250,000 messages per day to register and sign up for the Sponsored Data Service (SDS). The funding will be used to enable SURBL to continue as a sustainable organization, and to enhance the effectiveness and capabilities of its service. The funding is, by design, very moderate and will provide much needed support to sustain this project.
The needs of the SURBL user community have always been foremost in our planning. Some of the benefits to subscribers include direct access to technical support, the ability to whitelist web sites, and increased rsync updating frequencies. In addition, the whole SURBL community will benefit from expanded research to further improve the speed, completeness and accuracy of the list data. SURBL's vision is to continue to enhance the functionality, quality, and overall effectiveness for the entire user community.
Please note that SURBL is allowing a grace period through Feb 28, 2009. Effective March 1, 2009 SURBL will begin restricting access to the datafeed service for unregistered users. Datafeed users who register for SDS prior to Jan 31, 2009, will receive 18 months service for the price of 12 months.
SURBL has partnered with MXTools which will provide dedicated customer service and technical support. MXTools provides a similar role for Spamhaus, providing sales and support of the Spamhaus Datafeed Service. Please contact support@mxtools.com to provide feedback and to indicate your level of interest in the continued use of SURBL.
Pricing information and registration can be found at:
As valued members of the SURBL community, we appreciate your support, and ask for your help in this new licensing model. It is SURBL's desire that you'll continue to use the SURBL data and subscribe to the SURBL SDS to support the SURBL project.
Sincerely,
Jeff Chan William Stearns Joe Wein Raymond Dijkxhoorn Andy Warner SURBL http://www.surbl.org/
Arnie Bjorklund MXTools arnieb@mxtools.com http://www.mxtools.com/ 1-866-931-9228
Reference Information:
SURBL usage policy: http://www.surbl.org/usage-policy.html MXTools - Authorized SURBL Representatives: http://www.surbl.org/datafeed
SURBL Usage Policy
SURBL data are updated more than 240 times daily and are provided to users worldwide via public DNS servers or via a data feed service. The former (DNS query) is completely free and subject to certain usage restrictions, while the latter (Data Feed) is a paid service. The revenue generated by the paid service ensures that SURBL can continue to reliably provide the information that hundreds of millions of users depend upon to keep their mailboxes and computers safe from messages that are unsolicited, phishing, or malware.
Free Use: For individual users, small charitable or non-profit organizations, small businesses or any other organizations that have fewer than 1,000 users or that scan fewer than 250,000 messages per day in total, the SURBL Free Query Service (FQS) is completely free and can be accessed via a worldwide network of servers. This network of servers is geographically diverse to ensure a very high level of responsiveness and reliability.
Sponsored Use: Any organization, including software developers, ISPs, or large organizations that provide email filtering (either as hardware, software or services, individually or as a combined offering) of 1,000 or more users SHOULD NOT be using the SURBL FQS. Instead they need to sign up for the Sponsored Data Service (SDS). SDS was developed to meet the professional needs of organizations and email technology providers who have a large number of mail messages to scan. As such it is far more efficient to conduct these scans against a local copy of the SURBL data. The SDS data are provided using an rsync feed that automatically updates the content with new additions. The SDS subscription fee includes unlimited access to our technical support team.
SURBL monitors the use of the FQS to ensure that heavy users are not abusing FQS, which is reserved for use by small organizations and individual end users. ________________________________________ SURBL Usage Policy effective 10/1/08