I didn't see anyone else post this, so I'll share it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19572.html

If someone beat me to the punch, sorry. Delete the thread. :)

ORBS is Dead!! Do you know the pain in the BUTT they were?????? Kept me with no SMTP till the host could prove they werent a spammer :eek:

ORBS is not dead at all....not if the people interested in keeping it going have anything to do with it.

I hope ORBGS will continue in some fashion. It was a valuable tool in curbing spam.

Lacey, it was your host that kept you without smtp, not ORBS. ORBS listed all open relays as they are potential relays for spammers. By having an open relay, your host was a spam facilitator. If you want to blame anyone, blame them!

No one subscribed to ORBS would be able to receive e-mail from you until the open relay was closed and your host removed from their list.

Blame your host.

Correct me if I'm wrong but disabling open relaying is just a matter of adding one simple line to the sendmail.mc macro file (and is disabled by default with more recent versions).

Originally posted by freakysid
Correct me if I'm wrong but disabling open relaying is just a matter of adding one simple line to the sendmail.mc macro file (and is disabled by default with more recent versions).
Or just taking it out of the inetd so that the server won't accept connections on port 25 (quicker to do than messing with the sendmail.mc hooplah, especially if you don't use sendmail :)).

I think the largest complaint most people had with ORBS was that it was more than a list of open relays... that is, it was a list of open relays plus anyone who annoyed the list maintainer. I believe the cases which got ORBS shut down ran more or less along the lines of "we don't operate open relays, but he's claiming that we do, this is illegal slander".

Oh, and before I forget again, the other major complaint people had was that they were being blacklisted simply because they blocked ORBS from accessing their network. They weren't operating (and had never operated) open relays, yet because they blocked off the 100+ probes ORBS was sending their way each day, they got blacklisted. Sort of a "we're going to slowly eat up your bandwidth, but don't complain or we'll tell everyone that you operate open relays" sort of a thing.