OT: Spamcop BL - good or dangerous?

Scott Silva ssilva at sgvwater.com
Wed Nov 29 21:00:44 GMT 2006


Matt Kettler spake the following on 11/29/2006 12:04 PM:
> Scott Silva wrote:
>> DAve spake the following on 11/29/2006 7:29 AM:
>>> John Rudd wrote:
>>>> Paul Kelly :: Blacknight Solutions wrote:
>>>>> Gerard Seibert wrote:
>>>>>> On Wednesday November 29, 2006 at 06:21:54 (AM) Arthur Sherman wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sometimes I get a message from any of lists I'm subscribed to, that
>>>>>>> mail to
>>>>>>> my address bounces.
>>>>>>> And as a reason I see Spamcop blocking sender's (legitimate) server.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Here comes the question:
>>>>>>> What would you use instead of Spamcop?
>>>>>>> It gotta be free service, and the more lists the better: right now,
>>>>>>> Spamcop
>>>>>>> is #1 blocking BL in the logs.
>>>>>>> I am afraid if I drop it, the blocking will be worse.
>>>>>> SpamCop does not block legitimate servers. I use SpamCop myself.
>>>>> I'm sorry, but that is complete rubbish. SpamCop users blatantly report
>>>>> every and any e-mail they receive even double opt-in mailing lists etc.
>>>>> It is an extremely dangerous BL to use if you wish to get legitimate
>>>>> e-mail.
>>>>>
>>>>> The only rbl of use (at smtp transaction time) is xbl. Anything else
>>>>> will drop legitimate mail, that is a fact.
>>>>>
>>>> I'm with you up until this point.
>>>>
>>>> Spamcop is absolute trash when it comes to just about every aspect of
>>>> their operations ... so I wouldn't trust their RBL at all.  At most, I
>>>> might use it in SpamAssassin with a _VERY_ low score.  Even then, I
>>>> would be suspicious of their reliability.
>>>>
>>>> However, I don't think XBL is the only valid RBL to use at SMTP time.
>>>> I've found SBL to be useful, and spamhaus in general to be reliable
>>>> and accurate (not just their XBL).  I therefore expect that I'll also
>>>> be using the PBL (and thus zen.spamhaus.org) in the near future.
>>>>
>>> We have been using zen.spamhaus.org for about two weeks now with
>>> excellent results, not one reported false positive. My users would let
>>> me know in a heartbeat if there were.
>>>
>>> It's too new to recommend, but I would certainly suggest doing your own
>>> testing as it is looking very promising. The big plus for us was PBL
>>> replaced our dialup RBL with better results, and no FP.
>>>
>>> DAve
>>>
>> I am still waiting for Spamhaus to list the PBL on their frontpage. Until then
>> I am going to have to consider it beta. If they don't list it, I have to think
>> they are not ready for it to go "prime time".
> 
> I'd agree.. However, if you're checking return-codes you *can* switch to using
> zen right now. As long as you're only acting on the SBL and XBL return codes,
> you should be fine with that.
> 
> That said, I'm being "aggressive" and checking all the return codes, but right
> now PBL is returning nothing. That said, even if PBL did start returning things,
> all it will on my system do is cause mail to get greylisted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
Just looked again at www.spamhaus.org/pbl , and they seem to be shooting for a
December startup. Not too far away :-D


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