RE: [cobalt-users] Get me off the ORBS list

["Tomi Crnicki" <tcrnicki@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Great, now ORBS is searching for "potential" spamming servers now
> and not just tagging ones known for spamming.

You get on the ORBS list ONLY if you have a verified open relay.

>  Somebody has got to
> get rid of this ORBS crap, I know someone who had to completely
> change the IP address of their server because it was the only way
> to get off the ORBS system (they got there by one user sending a
> promotional email to 150 past customers ONCE).

Getting of the list isn't a big issue if you have resolved the open 
relay problem. A few years ago we got on the ORBS list when a 
spammer used our open relay on a system that had a older 
sendmail with a default open relay. This was entirely our mistake 
and after closing the relay we got of the list in a few hours.

> I am officially
> boycotting the ORBS database personally, and I would highly
> recommend that anyone else who values their freedom to run a
> server on the internet should do the same thing. 

On the other hand we think entirely different. Even through the 
ORBS and VIX systems are far from fault proof and rely on a few 
people I heard many don't like (I don't know the people behing the 
systems personaly and really don't care as they are doing 
something we think is good) they are currently the only good way 
to stop most of the spam coming into our mail servers. The best 
thing that makes this better than most other spam preventing 
methods is that filters are updated dynamically and we don't have 
to waste time.

Recently we decided to modify our sendmails to deny mail from 
hosts on the blacklists after the ratio of spam to regular E-mail 
went up to 5:1. After we did this we get very little spam and the 
ones that manage to come in is reported immediatelly back to 
ORBS. This hopefully gets newly used open relays blacklisted for 
the benefit of other ORBS users.

With a few hundred domains and a few thousand users only a 
handfull of users had a problem with not getting mail from some 
people. But this all was resolved fast when the postmster of the 
SMTP that was denied closed it the open relay. On the other hand 
our customers stopped complaining about SPAM and are acctually 
very happy because of this service. We even got a few new 
customers because we installed this service!

> Spam control is the responsibility of the servers admin, and should stay there!

Unfortunatelly we do not agree. There are so many new mail server 
admins with doubtable knowledge that you simply can't rely on 
them. And we and probably many other admins have no time 
educating them. ORBS educates them much faster as the 
problems are immediate and the admins have to respond to 
complaints by their users because of bounced E-mail messages.

We respect your view, but please respect our view too. It's up to 
you to close the open relays. But if a spammer uses your services 
it might acctually be us reporting this to ORBS.

Best regards,

Tomi Crnicki - Abacus, Croatia