OT: Re: Recent issue with SORBS

[Steve Freegard]

Hi Angelo,

am.lists wrote:
> We contacted our Host Facility: They said that SORBS is essentially an
> extortionist organization. They ask you to pay a fine ($50) to delist
> the block. As a large organization, sometimes customers do send a
> message that is classified as spam. As a responsible hosting provider,
> they deal with them accordingly. Specifically, if one of the
> blacklists notifies them of an infraction, they give the customer one
> warning. There is no second warning and their account is turned off.

I'm no fan of SORBS or their listing or de-listing policies, but what 
your hosting facility is telling you doesn't feel particularly right.

Only companies such as AOL and Spamcop that provide the ability for 
their users to report spam back to them provide the means for the 
provider to notify the owner of the netblock (who has to register their 
IP ranges) via a FBL (feedback loop).

RBLs like Spamhaus, CBL and SORBS do not have FBL mechanisms so the 
Hosting Facility would not receive a notice for these listings.

I would check your entire /24 block in zen.spamhaus.org and 
list.dsbl.org and see if any of the IP addresses within the block are 
listed.  If there are any listings present then go back to your host and 
call their bluff.

A quick bit of shell-script can help here - e.g. if your /24 is 
192.168.1.0/24 then:

for i in `seq 1 1 254`; do host $i.1.168.192.zen.spamhaus.org | grep -i 
'has address'; done

Would give you a list of all the listed IPs.

If not - then their isn't much you can do about the SORBS listing as 
they are notorious for such practices.

Kind regards,
Steve.