blacklists (was Re: [Asterisk-biz] XO (was: group buy!))

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, NVC List Manager wrote:

> Yup, besides from the fact that I mixed then up with Level3, they were
> pretty horrid. When your ISP gives you blacklisted IP's you know it's
> time to move.
While I'm not going to defend XO much on the IP side, I need to point that 
in a year I had XO IP transit, I haven't had to contact them about any 
issues. XO IP is pretty solid. 

With regard to blacklists, please see below:

a) many blacklists like SPEWS, SORBS, BLARS are grudge-driven, and about 
the only thing that they prove is "You have, or at one point, had a 
customer". 

b) SORBS and BLARS are essentially blackmail for network owners to pay not 
to be listed. They are entirely ineffective for stopping of spam.

c) SPEWS lists so much space, it is entirely unusable. 90% of Pilosoft's 
space is in SPEWS (and be assured, we have not and never will support 
spam). With close to a thousand of servers, we get a complaint about SPEWS 
blockage about once a month, at most. That shows that SPEWS isn't really 
being used all that much, and its a good thing.

So...When you use the blacklist-ness of IP space to evaluate providers, 
you are not doing correct evaluation.

This is getting to be far offtopic for -biz list, though.

-alex