Today I woke up and found that many emails sent by my users were bounced back with "IP blacklisted" errors so I took a look at some blacklist database and found that my first server was in fact blacklisted. I repeated this with my other servers and they were blacklisted as well. So I took my DC's IPs and found that the whole DC was blacklisted including the IP of the site where the DC offers their servers...

Isn't that kind of aggressive to block whole DCs ? I mean especially the DC I am referring to (I will not mention their name) does in fact take spam very seriously. One or two spam cop complaints and they will ask you to remove the page. How can people just blacklist a whole DC although it takes care of spam in a professional way ? The anti spam lobby is just dumb and aggressive. Getting one or two unrequested emails and deleting them takes approx. 2 minutes. And only to save some people 2 minutes they destroy whole companies and take innocent people's jobs. I mean ok, if the datacenter simply ignores all requests it is ok to blacklist them but they are blacklisting DCs that are really doing a lot to prevent spam.

I just hate these bastards.

Send them an email explaining how you have dealt with the spam source on your servers and they will unblock your IP. Not really sure why they've blocked the whole DC's range of IP's though seems very drastic. I'm sure they wouldn't do this lightly.

Andrew

I'm puzzled about the inclusion of the word "lesbian" in the thread title. What has it got to do with your blacklisting problem?!

Originally posted by beyondego
I'm puzzled about the inclusion of the word "lesbian" in the thread title. What has it got to do with your blacklisting problem?!

It doesn't actually refer to lesbians. When I say "lesbian aggressive" I mean it is like the kind of women who think that all men should be castrated because dicks are evil: Just hysteric and aggressive although there is no reason to be hysteric and aggressive. And that describes the anti spam lobby quite well. They'd rather destroy companies and take people's jobs then to waste 60 seconds to delete some spam emails.

The blocklist that I have seen doing this is SPEWS were if they get a certain amount of unresolve spam complaints, they start expanding the block size to include neighbors (other ips and blocks).

You always seem to be unfairly "attacked" by the anti-spam crowd... but didn't you admit you did have a spamming client earlier?

And the inclusion of lesbian, and your definition of lesbians is childish and un-needed. But it does show into the type of person you are.

>You always seem to be unfairly "attacked" by the anti-spam
>crowd... but didn't you admit you did have a spamming client
>earlier?

yes, but all spamming clients are suspended immediately. Also it doesn`t really matter what I have as the whole DC is blocked so even if I would never have had any spammers I`d be on that list.

>And the inclusion of lesbian, and your definition of lesbians

I did clearly state that it is not a definition of lesbian women. "Lesbian aggressive" is a metaphor for some behaviour I described above. It doesn't refer to real lesbians. If I were referring to lesbians I wouldn't mind to say so.

>is childish and un-needed. But it does show into the type of
>person you are.

No, it shows absolutely nothing. You don`t know anything about me and you shouldn`t jugde me. Switch off the black/white mode...

Originally posted by datums
The blocklist that I have seen doing this is SPEWS were if they get a certain amount of unresolve spam complaints, they start expanding the block size to include neighbors (other ips and blocks).

Ok I get annoyed at Spews but let's face it, if they're blacklisting the whole darn data center someone is being a VERY BAD little boy. I've had IPs blocked in the past thanks to my neighbors and the data center (GNAX) got it fixed and we were un-blocked within 2 weeks. So you need to get grumpy with your data center, not Spews (assuming you're talking about Spews) and get them to take out their garbage.

As for the lesbian comment - maybe a full mod could edit that a bit, it's kinda abrasive to some I suppose.

So you need to get grumpy with your data center, not Spews (assuming you're talking about Spews) and get them to take out their garbage.


Sorry Dixiesys, spews is a poor excuse for a blocklist. If any blocklist should be closed I think it should be them. Blocking an entire DC and tens of thousands of innocent domains is far beyond acceptable IMHO.

Spews and blackholes.us are the worst. They both have two large DCs blocked completely (and I mean large...you all know them). Must be much more than 500.000 domains blocked on these two datacenters alone. I wonder what else they are blocking... probably like 90% of the entire internet LOL. These guys probably enjoy to make things difficult for other people.

I guess the only IPs that are not blacklisted by blackholes and Spews are their own IPs and 127.0.0.1 LOL

Spews is used quite extensively and every time I've had an IP end up on it, I HEARD about it from -customers- you know the folks that pay our bills. Whether I like spews or not (I don't really) I made sure the problem got FIXED and the data center I used did as well, spammers removed, listing cleared, and we were good to go.

Like it or not you must deal with it, sounds like you're already being bothered by it, so get the problem fixed, if your data center won't do what's required to get the heck off Spews' list, then find a new data center. $$$ talks BS walks.

I won't let Spews or some other ridiculous bunch of wannabe gods dictate which datacenter I have to choose. I'd rather lose a few customers. It doesn`t seem like it is possible to deal with these guys. Blocking an entire datacenter is like blowing up a shopping mal: They put large organizations under pressure by harming innocent people. That is pretty much online terrorism.

Yes Thomas, the same arguments I used long ago too, and I finally learned to either put up with it (not an option when it starts hitting the bottom line ($)) or do what is necessary to get OFF of it. Luckily GNAX where I have most of my servers seems to be pretty good at staying off of Spews overall, as is EV1 for the most part.

I once had a dedicated server with a company that didn't seem to care about being on spews and I ended up just cancelling my business with them as I got tired of dealing with customers mad over having email bounce to their friends on ISPs or hosts who DO block with spews.

You can do what you want of course, just saying I went through the same things as you and I had to deal with it too.

Spews is just ridiculous. Look at some of the comments they add to their blacklists !! This organization seems to be operated by 10 year olds.

Thomas, the same could be said for your comments. Gary, i have gone round with Thomas before, it is a lost cause. All the worlds at fault, even when he hosts the spammers.

I agree in that some of the blacklisting tactics used today are obsolete BUT I also agree in that they work to get hosts to remove offenders from the server...

by the way... I am glad that your subject line was corrected... hopefully you will think twice before using such terms

Spam is simply getting out of control, and getting worse.

Althought I disagree with the tactics used by SPEWS to pressure service providers to stop spammers, the methods they emply do work, to a large extent.

If you are a large datacenter and a big chunk of your IP space gets blacklisted, this will obviously punish some customers who have nothing to do with sending out spam. Although I think SPEWS should just list the actual ranges in question, but leave ranges alone that are not responsible. They do this on purpose to put pressure on the provider (via their clients) to get them to do something about the problem.

If you are a customer, and your ability to send email is affected, wouldn't you be angry as hell at your datacenter? You'd probably have no choice but to take your business elsewhere.

This is why SPEWS and other similar SBL's work so well. After all, passing all the laws or legislation in the world is not going to end the UCE problem anytime soon. It's rather hard to get listed in SPEWS. You've really got to be a very BAD boy. The bottom line is that all ISP's need to be much more diligent in getting rid of the problem spammers long before they get listed in the first place.