[SURBL-Discuss] Re: Jeff's whitelists

Jeff Chan jeffc at surbl.org
Mon Jul 19 15:48:08 CEST 2004


On Monday, July 19, 2004, 2:14:46 PM, Frank Ellermann wrote:
> Jeff Chan wrote:

>> If I mention http://www.spamarrest.com/ in my message, and
>> spamarrest.com is in a SURBL, then my message could get
>> blocked.

> Sure, the same is true for any URL in SURBL.  Apparently you
> are now planning to list sex sites only because they are sex
> sites.  You're even making jokes about recipients who cannot
> complain if they don't get their daily XXX pics :-(

We're considering it.  It has benefits and disadvantages.
The benefit is that it would be an easy way to block sex
sites, both in email and potentially in web proxies (assuming
someone writes that code, for example into squid).  The
potential problem is that if it's misapplied it could
create a large new set of false positives.

> Use the raw SC data, don't introduce arbitrary whitelisting.

We can't use the raw, unwhitelisted SpamCop data since it could
easily be poisoned. For example an abuser or spammer could submit
http://www.claranet.de/ or http://www.google.com/ or
http://www.spamcop.net/ to SpamCop a few times then those would
be blocked.  Obviously we can't allow that.

>> especially when you agree spamarrest is not originating the
>> messages purely themselves.  A better answer may be that they
>> have an abuse problem and should fix it.

> They have more than an abuse problem.  I reported some of their
> challenges manually and never got an answer.  They are spammers
> selling a pseudo-spam-solution.

I see it differently.  Besides if that have *any significant*
legitimate use, we can't list them.

>> I'd recommend reporting your spams to the relevant state and
>> national governments' anti-spam folks.

> And spamarrest.com isn't an innocent bystander, it's
> their "business model" to harass third parties.

If their business model is to spam people, then the State of
Washington could trivially use their anti-spam laws to shut them
down.  Did you report them?

    http://www.atg.wa.gov/junkemail/

If not, then there's not much to say.

Jeff C.



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