Spamhaus replacement

[Matt Kettler]

Budi Febrianto wrote:
> Right now we only use zen.spamhaus.org and happy so far, but because 
> spamhaus is not free anymore, now I want some recommendation for others 
> dnsbl.
> Temporarily I plan to move it to others dnsbl while I do some 
> administrative task to explain to our management that spamhaus is not 
> free anymore.
> 
> Some search I found that I can use these dnsbls
> cbl.abuseat.org
> bl.spamcop.net
> dialups.mail-abuse.org
> 

Note:

cbl.abuseat.org is a feed to xbl.spamhaus.org. If you dig around on abuseat's 
site, they have a policy prohibiting using cbl directly if you'd need a datafeed 
to use xbl.

The other feed into xbl is the open proxy list from njabl, and they have no such 
restrictions.

bl.spamcop.net works pretty well, but does have some significant FPs now that 
they list backscatter sites (in the SpamAssassin 3.2 mass-checks, the hits on 
spamcop were 87.1% spam, and therefore 12.9% nonspam)

mail-abuse.org isn't free, and hasn't been for years. It's now a part of Trend's 
"Email Reputation Services", which is a for-pay service.


In general you might want to look at the STATISTICS file that comes with SA and 
see what the SpamAssassin mass-checks came up with. A "perfect" spam rule will 
have a S/O of 1.0 (for 100% of matches being spam, 0% nonspam), so look for RBL 
tests (RCVD_IN_*) with S/O's above 0.95 (95% spam, 5% nonspam). Also look for 
ones that match a decent amount of mail, because a perfectly accurate list with 
really low hit-rate isn't helpful. I'd look for at least 5% in the spam% column.

http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/spamassassin/branches/3.2/rules/STATISTICS-set3.txt