blacklisting by SORBS

[Claude Jones]

On Tuesday 16 August 2005 5:52 pm, Glenn Meyer wrote:
> Thomas Zehetbauer wrote:
>
> I beg to differ with you.   I use several for the incoming mail to my
> home domain .........................etc

First, I'd like to thank everyone who has posted to this thread. There are a 
number of people now watching this thread to see the responses I'm getting to 
my query. 

To Glenn: It's nice that you've had such a positive experience. Ours has been 
quite different. Beginning two weeks ago, we started getting e-mails bounced 
back to us from a variety of sources. Calls to our ISP yielded a frustrating 
response - we were told they were 'working' on it, and that SORBS appeared to 
be demanding money to be removed from their list. This seemed fairly 
outrageous to me, and I chalked the explanation off as a brush off. It turns 
out I was wrong. SORBS does indeed demand money for certain kinds of 
removals. Further, they are unresponsive. Further, their site is broken in at 
least one vital respect. Regarding the unresponsiveness, here are excerpts 
from an email I received from my ISP's President on the subject:

*************************************************************************
'We've been trying to work with SORB's to resolve the blocking
problem, however, they will not respond to our repeated attempts to reach
them.  We have followed all of their required protocols but it seems to go
nowhere.  I even offered to pay the fine personally and they still won't
respond.  

This is what we know so far:

1.) The fine would not apply to our situation, it's a spamtrap situation.

2.) Even if we wanted to pay the fine we couldn't, they don't respond to
support ticket requests.

3.) We are looking to try a work around a little later this week, but we
can't guarantee it will work.

I wish I could give you better news, but SORBS has placed an unreasonableWe've 
been trying to work with SORB's to resolve the blocking
problem, however, they will not respond to our repeated attempts to reach
them.  We have followed all of their required protocols but it seems to go
nowhere.  I even offered to pay the fine personally and they still won't
respond.  

This is what we know so far:

1.) The fine would not apply to our situation, it's a spamtrap situation.

2.) Even if we wanted to pay the fine we couldn't, they don't respond to
support ticket requests.

3.) We are looking to try a work around a little later this week, but we
can't guarantee it will work.

I wish I could give you better news, but SORBS has placed an unreasonable
burden on us and probably other undeserving ISP's and not cooperated or
provided us with anyway out of the trap.  I'm having difficulty
understanding why people would want to use their service, if they're
blocking everybody, including the good guys, this may cut down on Spam but
it's placing an onerous and unreasonable burden of others.

We'll keep you posted on any success we may have in creating our own
in-house work-around solution.

burden on us and probably other undeserving ISP's and not cooperated or
provided us with anyway out of the trap.  I'm having difficulty
understanding why people would want to use their service, if they're
blocking everybody, including the good guys, this may cut down on Spam but
it's placing an onerous and unreasonable burden of others.

We'll keep you posted on any success we may have in creating our own
in-house work-around solution."
*********************************************************************
In regards to the SORBS website, they do allow you to do a database lookup, 
which I did. It returned a negative value. However, I noticed I'd plugged in 
an incorrect address (which by the way, I got returned to me as the address 
of our ISP's mail server by another blacklisting lookup service). When I 
tried to do a second lookup, I got a message that I'd been 'throttled' - the 
explanation was that they only allow ten lookups per hour - BUT, I'd only 
done ONE lookup!

So, I ask, who in the hell are these services? One returns an incorrect 
address as that of my ISP's mail server. Another has blacklisted my ISP, but 
doesn't respond to repeated attempts to deal with the matter according to 
their own published guidelines. 

What gives them the right to set themselves up as judge, jury, and prison 
staff? This matter is starting to seriously interfere with our company's 
business - this is my livelihood we're talking about, now. 

-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA