Having read this diatribe I can only catagorize it as mis-informed and
state unequivocably that Brian McWilliams has no clue whatsoever who
runs SPEWS. (please see myriad interviews I have down with BMcW).
Brian McWilliams makes no claims about who runs SPEWS in the book.
"See more about mailbombing. Mailbombers are spammers. They just aren't
in it for the money. Or possibly they are. SORBS asks for donations to
get delisted, and also seeks donations from Subscribers. It is very
unusual for blacklists to extort money this way."
This also is a blatant mischaracterization, the AHBL relies on donations
and advertisements on the website to fund it's operational budget,
spamhaus charges for commercial
supporthttp://www.spamhaus.org/organization/funding.html .
Not from the victims, I hope.
MCI reaps 5 million dollars per year on spam related income
http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/spam_aajghgebej_c/, spam
costs companies billions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17754-2003Mar12, why are we
expected to fight it for free?
Because Open Relay blacklists have in the past given their databases
directly to spammers (or abusers, anyway). This generates abuse, which
the blacklist then happilly charges fees to block. We ought not encourage
that.
Though we do our best to look out for the good of the internet we are
not by any means communists, and we deserve to be compensated for our
work. Right now the AHBL barely covers the operational costs of the
servers on a month-to-month basis let alone compensating it's volunteers
for their time.
This is about SORBS, not AHBL. But speaking of for-profit anti-spam, most
people aren't interested. The IETF recently rejected SPF technology due to
its patent encumbrances. Anti-spam technology has to be free and
pervasive. Your dreams of getting rich on anti-spam are unlikely to be
realized.
> SORBS seems to be collecting a lot of sensitive information to view
> listings:
My site, my rules, or in this case Matthew's site, Matthew's rules. As
a non-paying user you always have a choice as to whether or not you
provide personal information to a website, should you choose not to,
don't. The same goes with useage of the DNSBL or RHSBL. Note that this
choice may result in your inability to access some content that that
site has to offer.
And when you collect an alarming amount of sensitive information
unnecessarily, people will be alerted.
> or used for other mass marketing purposes.
If Matthew Sullivan uses this to send spam, I'll personally eat my MTA.
ORBS and others were involved in mailbombing. (I conducted tests of this
back in the late 1990's.) Sullivan has threatened mailbombing. 3 MAPS
employees went to work for a well-known spammer. Doesn't seem like it
would be very surprising. It wouldn't the first time.
I hope your MTA is bio-degradable. Otherwise, you may have difficulty
passing it.
--Dean
