SPEWS.org problem | Go Back
Big thanks to Richard Stanway for his valuable feedback on my Qmail guide. I received the following e-mail from him:
From: “Richard Stanway”
I would strongly recommend you remove the relays.osirusoft.com and replace it with a more responsible list such as sbl.spamhaus.org. The relays.osirusoft.com zone contains SPEWS.org data - SPEWS operate by “punishing” ISPs who host spammers by blacklisting huge IP ranges in order to make them lose customers and “pressure” them into booting spammers. I for one do not agree with this tactic that is causing many legit messages from innocent users who happen to use the same ISP to be bounced. My server on which I set up qmail following your guide happens to be on a SPEWS IP range even though my ISP has a strict anti spam policy - a spammer signs up, spams for a day, gets booted from the network and then my IP range is blacklisted on SPEWS for months on end causing legitimate mail to be bounced and no way to our IP range removed.
I am not the only one to be suffering legitimate mail bouncing as a result of SPEWS, I can tell you that for sure. I would greatly appreciate it if you could remove relays.osirusoft.com from your example file to stop users who may not know what they are doing following your guide and accidentally using this SPEWS zone data and blocking legitimate messages. The sbl.spamhaus.org zone on the other hand I have found to be very well maintained and targeted exclusively at spammer IP ranges and not one legit message has been lost as a result of my using this zone. The worst thing is it is next to impossible to be removed from SPEWS - if you are an ISP offering a competitive price and a spammer signs up on your service then you are screwed. Even if you have strict anti spam policies and remove them from the network you do not get delisted, so I do not see how their “pressure tactics” against ISPs will help anything - the ISP has no incentive to boot spammers if they will still remain listed.
I would also appreciate it if you could perhaps do your own research on SPEWS and recommend to people not to use them if you feel the same way as I do. I have put a little article on my website at http://www.r1ch.net. There are also some recent articles on theregister.co.uk and msnbc.com about SPEWS. SPEWS obviously is not going away any time soon so it is up to people to convince mail server admins not to use their zone data. I think a lot of people are using the DNSBL without even realizing it since it is incorporated into the relays.osirusoft.com zone. It really sucks that I have bought a new dedicated server and because my ISP offers good pricing, spammers take advantage of them and SPEWS then goes and ruins it for everyone by listing us and causing mail to bounce from the whole IP range.
Thus, relays.osirusoft.com is gone from my SMTP execution script.
Actually, SPEWS or any other blacklist do not punish anyone. The network administrator that use their list decide on the actions that are taken for those mail servers that reside on these types of lists. Spammer blacklists are just that, lists.
Just wanted to clarify.
I completely agree as I am a victim too. My website technitium.com got listed in SPEWS.ORG as I was accessing my control pannel through the ISP who’s IP range was blocked by SPAMHAUS.ORG. (See http://www.spews.org/html/S3170.html) Hence, since Oct 19, 2004 I was forced to get another webservice provider to host my site and lost the entire money I had payed just a month ago for earlier hosting sevice. Hence, I HATE SPEWS.ORG, they must be punished by law for making the Internet unuseable.