Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Legal challenges to vigilante spam lists

[axishost]

I have lost about 5 customers so far - with excellent service provided - solely because the ISP I am on is being blanked blocked by a spam list.

The hosting industry is losing millions of dollars and customers due to something they did not do, and after countless attempts for a certain list to remove me - my emails have been ignored.

SPEWS is blocking an entire block of IPs and bouncing my customers mail.

What can a hosting company do? Has anyone made a site specifically for destroying spam lists - this shouldn't go on without legal challenges or other means of taking these lists offline as they unfairly discriminate legitimate email, and cause lost revenue.


So yet again I have to email the customer who says - you have really great service and I don't want to leave, but this list is forcing me to.

Thank you,

Jeremy

[2Grumpy]

Care to post an IP? I checked 64.71.173.201 and it doesn't show at spews.

[akashik]

And what is your ISP doing to prevent spammers using their network?

[amusive.com]

Move to a ISP that handles abuse requests in a responsible manner.

[TheAciD]

This is why it is important to go with a good ISP. Internap, as well as the bell groups are good at getting un-listed. Also, getting your own arin IPs would solve this problem. If you are paying a decent amount of money for your ISP let them know that you will have to move somewhere else if they cant get their act together. Spews is a very irresponsible group, but you can be de-listed. I've personally gotten our shared hosting servers de-listed a couple of times, because we own our own IP block.

[chet]

You can do something, stop paying money to a provider that supports spammers.

[axishost]

I don't think it should be the ISP's job to play cop and support these spam lists just because they are forced and strongarmed into it.

What is worse- getting spam or being censored and blocked from normal communication due to others actions from a different server / different company?

I think these lists are taking the completely wrong approach and their proof of concept is seriously flawed

I am going to be working on a site that is going to be against the spamlists, pro other means of blocking spam for the individuals and hosting companies that are casualties of war

http://undeliverable.org

Look for it in a couple days

I would like to discuss the lists on there, experiences, and ways to remove or render the lists ineffective

JDT

[2Grumpy]

so.. what ip is being blocked?

[TheAciD]

Originally posted by axishost

I think these lists are taking the completely wrong approach and their proof of concept is seriously flawed

I agree fully, blocking spam should be handled by the client. There are beautiful programs such as cloudmark spamnet that you can install on your client to make a HUGE difference, without ever having the chance of loosing a legitimate email.


Blocking IPs is NOT! the answer, it is an irresponsible cop out.

[amusive.com]

If you don't like blacklists, then don't use them. Other people CHOOSE to use IP blacklists because they realize they're effective.

[TheAciD]

The problem is the ISP is FORCING them to use the lists, it should be the client's decision on wheather or not they want the spam filtering on.

[axishost]

Just not using them is not an option unless you can tell everyone to not use them it's being bounced on the remote side and not my side

JDT

[2Grumpy]

So rhetoric aside what IP is being blocked? And it looks to me like the block is working, you're here complaining about it rather than ignoring the spam problem alltogether like your ISP must have in order to get ON the list in the first place. So post what ip you have being blocked so someone can lookup the entry at spews to see the history.

[amusive.com]

ISPs use the list because they are responsible for maintaining functional systems. Many ISPs do not want to deal with the waste of resources that result from other ISPs that allow network abuse. So they block them.

[axishost]

someone at theplanet.com was spamming - which caused an entire class C practically to be put in SPEWS, and then SPEWS was read by relays.osirusoft.com - basically didn't remove it and right now I don't have a way to check.

I think I finally got out of SPEWS after countless emails however it's still in the one man show relays.osirusoft.com which basically just reads the spews database as a source.

So someone was spamming - what action did spews take - blocking an entire block this is part of the problem - and that company that caused it was not in any way affiliated with my site.

This is just one in countless stories of ineffective spam blocking with a blanket approach - or you could call it effective blocking with the side effect of the innocent losing revenue and wasting time trying to explain this to a user what happened. Blocking by IP just doesn't really work - and spammers are not that stupid.

JDT