[SURBL-Discuss] Possible large whitelist from DMOZ data

[Jeff Chan]

On Thursday, October 7, 2004, 5:55:07 AM, Rob McEwen wrote:
> Jeff,

> I did the test as promised. So far, I have collected two hams and 37 spams
> when manually filtering on this list. (The spams include many which are
> duplicates where the spammer sent a batch of spams to various clients of
> mine). I sorted these via a quick manual judgment-call, but I'll research
> and double-check these more as I get time.

> Here are the two FPs:

> jjkeller.com
> (see http://www.pvsys.com/jjkeller.txt )
> This was a domain name contained with a newsletter which appears to be
> legitimate. I showed this to my client who was the intended recipient. He
> said that he didn't recall subscribing to it, but he felt like it was a
> legitimate and informative newsletter for his industry and he said he
> desired to receive it. (I know, a bit weak... but still should be consider
> for whitelisting??). Does anyone else know anything about jjkeller.com ??

All the domains in that newsletter look like legitimate sellers
of industrial safety equipment and hardly spam candidates:

msha.gov
stevenspublishing.com
ohsonline.com
lss.com
apbuck.com
huserinc.com
jjkeller.com

The only "controversial" one might be:

processrequest.com

which appears in newsletters a lot and belongs to a marketing
company that we already whitelisted.

Therefore I've whitelisted all of the above, including
jjkeller.com, the source of which is:

/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-2004-07:jjkeller.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-2004-07:jjkellermail.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-hand-checked:jjkellermail.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-hand-checked-2004-07:jjkellermail.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-sa-blacklist.200406281446.domains:jjkeller.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-sa-blacklist.200406281446.domains:jjkellermail.com

> associateprograms.com
> (see http://www.pvsys.com/associateprograms.txt )
> This is a very reputable site for teaching people how to make a living from
> affiliate advertising. It is very white-hat and does NOT encourage people to
> spam or to harvest addresses. It encourages use of legitimate opt-in
> advertising, building web sites, and using pay-per-clicks to advertise
> affiliate links. It probably got listed due to an open loop signup form (but
> I'm just speculating). There is a link on this site called "Want to fool
> spam filters?" ...don't let this link fool you. This page is really about
> dealing with filters which are out of control, block legitimate mail, and
> where the mail provider is unwilling to whitelist trusted sender/receiver
> combos and unwilling to explain why any particular message got blocked.

This bunch is more uncertain since they're all possible spam
candidates:

mp3dollars.com
associateprograms.com
affiliatesuccess.net
liutilities.com
webmastersreference.com
payperclicksearchengines.com
lifetimecustomers.com
lifetimecommissions.com

however only associateprograms.com is currently listed.  Looks
like it came probably into WS from BigEvil:

/web/antispam/bigevil.domains:associateprograms.com
/home/wstearns/black-wstearns-sa-blacklist.200406281446.domains:associateprograms.com

1998 domain, no SBL, but 10 NANAS.  Given the few NANAS reports
I'd agree they could be a legitimate affiliate program that
gets a little abuse.

I'm going to go ahead and whitelist them, but would like to
get feedback from anyone with additional comments.

> I'll keep sending this FP stuff from this list as I receive it in my custom
> filter... and, when I get more time, I'll (also) send a list and a link to
> the stuff that I deemed as spam.

Yes, please keep finding any that you find.

Jeff C.
--
"If it appears in hams, then don't list it."