The Imminent Demise of SORBS 290
An anonymous reader lets us know about the dire straits the SORBS anti-spam blacklist finds itself in. According to a notice posted on the top page, long-time host the University of Queensland has "decided not to honor their agreement with... SORBS and terminate the hosting contract." The post, signed "Michelle Sullivan (Previously known as Matthew Sullivan)," says that the project needs either to "find alternative hosting for a 42RU rack in the Brisbane area of Queensland Australia" or to find a buyer. Offers are solicited for the assets of SORBS as an ongoing anti-spam service — it's now handling over 30 billion DNS queries per day. An update to the post says "A number of offers have already been made, we are evaluating each on their own merits." Failing a successful resolution, SORBS will cease operations on July 20, 2009 at 12 noon Brisbane time. Such a shutdown could slow or disrupt anti-spam efforts for large numbers of mail hosts worldwide.
Re:*snort* (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up. The death of SORBS would be a net gain in the fight against spam. Blacklisting entire ISP's who are "insufficiently responsive" only makes sense if you don't care whether email gets delivered or not.
doc
Um, is this at all credible? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if this is subterfuge, but:
http://www.iadl.org/sorbs/sorbs-story.html [iadl.org]
Re:*snort* (Score:4, Interesting)
You're kidding, right?
They have done more to give legitimate anti-spam efforts a black eye than ANY legislative attempts to 'solve' the problem ever could.
I -used- to believe that 'collateral damage' was a legitimate 'tactic' in the fight against spammers. I've grown up since then.
You get a big high five from me on that. On my previous job, SORBS caused us a lot of problems. It was very difficult to get off their lists once they listed you and if I remember correctly they also had a policy of not telling you why you were listed to begin with. I remember that one of the guys in our main European office was able to make friends with one of the SORBS guys in the same country and get some information about why we were blacklisted. Normally they didn't tell you why you were blacklisted, but this was some "countryman to countryman" special favor this SORBS guy did for us. We had a lot of email problems because some customers would use only SORBS for dealing with spam so if you're on the list, your email doesn't go through to them. I'm not saying that SORBS couldn't have been a useful minor part of an anti-spam solution, but all I saw was customers who blindly trusted SORBS and only SORBS and that made our life hell. I agree that I no longer think that SORBS' collection of tactics is legitimate. There are better ways to deal with spam and if SORBS dies, well, sign me up to dance on their grave.
Death to SORBS (Score:3, Interesting)
I run an ISP in the midwest. SORBS has caused so many problems, I don't want to bore you all with them here. I briefly talked with Mr(s?) Sullivan via email back in 07 about several problems he caused by blocking subnets we had on both Nuvox and XO. His response to my email (which was long but detailed), I paster here for brevity:
---------snip---------
F_ck off.
Yours trully,
ms
---------snip---------
Hopefully, she/he takes up dancing at a crossdress clubs and stays the _hell_ off the internet.
Re:*snort* (Score:3, Interesting)
There are not a lot of products out there that support anything but blocking based on those RBL's.
I would love to find a proprietary product out there that uses the RBL's like that and also provides the features I am looking for.
So far I have not run into too many problems with the outright blocking though. I figure if there is a real problem, that I will get a support call from a customer and I can act accordingly. So far, no calls after 3 years of running like this with quite a number of mail clients and domains.
What's this then, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
ROM's being charged for: http://vampire.isux.com/ROMs/ [isux.com]
Dubious images: http://vampire.isux.com/pics/x/ [isux.com]
So what's going on Matthew... I mean, Michelle?
Re:Explanation please (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Explanation please (Score:2, Interesting)
I appreciate your apology, and your comment didn't (in and of itself) offend, just the moderation. I definitely didn't get the reference and it would appear, according to Suzanne Vega herself [vega.net] (scroll down to interview excerpt), the song was certainly written with good intent.
All that said, and having nothing to do with your comment, I'm not thrilled with Vega saying, "...I found out she wasn't really a girl," (emphasis added) in reference to the song's inspiration. Again, I don't think Vega is coming from a transphobic or hateful place, I just want to point out that that's not generally considered respectful language. (This isn't directly specifically at you, MichaelSmith, just more a general note...)
-Trillian
PS - I know I've been spoiled by the Internet, because I'm frustrated I wasn't able to imediately find an audio and/or video version of As Girls Go, so I could check it out, with a 30 second Google search...
Re:No big loss! (Score:3, Interesting)
Blacklists are more than just a pain, they're as much a cancer on SMTP infrastructure as spam. And among cancers, SORBS is the worst. I'll be glad to see it die.
Re:Heh.. you will find a lot of hostility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possible Alternate Hosting (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you provide all the domains you host, so that I can get as many mail admins together to arbitrarily block your servers, and demand "donations" to unblock them?
Thanks in advance, you worthless pile of trash.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the best news I've heard all week!
SORBS is a blight on the anti-spam effort front and should have been run out of town on a rail years ago. It has done more damage to the perception of anti-spam lists than any other single entity on the internet. Hell, some spammers are better behaved and have better morals than the operator(s) of SORBS. I would literally turn to Microsoft or McAffee for anti-spam solutions before I'd even consider SORBS.
I hope the dirtbags that ran SORBS end up destitute in a gutter somewhere.
Re:*snort* (Score:1, Interesting)
In lieu of blacklisting, how would you suggest giving ISPs a disincentive towards knowingly hosting spammers for lucrative "pink contracts"?
full disclosure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:(of course, I may have mis-read you) (Score:1, Interesting)
Might I suggest
http://assp.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Developers can be a little hostile but it's so good you can use the defaults, train it a bit and leave it be.
Re:No big loss! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a fixed IP address (according to my provider, BizNetvigator - I'm paying for a fixed address at least!) but according to SORBS I am in a "dynamic IP range", and they can not and will not unlist my IP address. As a result I am forced to relay my mails through the mail server of my provider. Totally unnecessary but it's the only way to assure delivery of e-mails. Many of my mails are rejected and bounce at smtp handshake level, I guess there will be plenty that are silently dropping it - both I consider bad practice, I want to receive my suspected junk, dump it in a junk folder, and look through it once a day to make sure. Greylisting takes care of 95% of the spam already, so only a dozen or so junks come in every day.
Also I do see sometimes my mails being greylisted, but as I'm running a real mail server that just causes some delays. It will try again shortly after.
Nothing's wrong with SORBS (Score:3, Interesting)
I use SORBS professionally. It works. It stops spam. The few times IP space from our customers got listed, they got delisted within 24 hours after contacting SORBS by e-mail. All it cost me was registering an account for my employer at SORBS.
As usual in the discussion on blocklisting, Slashdot is being overrun by, ehm, 'legitimate biznizmen' and their supporters, and people who know jack shit about blocklisting and its history, but believe those who shout the loudest.
Mart
Re:No big loss! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No big loss! (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank God (Score:1, Interesting)
Much like everyone else, I'm overjoyed by this news!!! Having to fight with SORBS about delisting IP blocks for months at a time, while irrate customers are threatening to cancel their services with you, and having your CFO breathing down your neck for resolution is not my idea of fun.
July 20th, 2009 can't come soon enough for me. I just hope no one decides to resurrect this fatally flawed and unresponsive system.
Good riddance! (Score:1, Interesting)
As an admin at an ISP I usually cheer any efforts aimed at reducing spam volume, but I've come to hate SORBS over the years -- mostly because of the Dynamic Hosts list. If you can't do a thing well, you shouldn't do it at all. Pity it took so long for them to -- hopefully -- disappear and/or get replaced by someone more competent.
Re:No big loss! (Score:3, Interesting)
Having been on the pointy end of SORBS several times I can honestly say that I never had any trouble getting off of it. I never had to pay any money, make any threats, or invoke demons from the lower planes to do it.
Every single time all I had to do was go to their web page and follow the simple directions given for removing myself from the naughty mailers list. No demands for small, unmarked bills were ever made and nobody ever tried to hassle me about it.