Of all people out there, I’m a quite vocal opponent of spamming – that is, unsolicited emails usually advertising some product or other. I know this problem won’t go away anytime soon. Indeed, almost every day I spend 30 minutes to an hour cleaning out literally thousands of spam messages from dozens of inboxes, so obviously I don’t consider this fun.
Recently a small non-profit association I’ve helped out in the past contacted me with an interesting problem – they were unable to send messages to Cogeco users. A bit of research revealed that their SMTP server was on an IP address blocked by SORBS, a DNS blacklist service that a number of ISPs apparently use when determining what messages may or may not be spam.
Further research revealed that this non-profit was using a shared server from a US-based hosting service. The IP address in question supported at least a few dozen different sites owened by different people – standard shared hosting fare. Okay, nothing unusual, so I started looking into getting the IP address removed, since the non-profit was not a spammer and this was hampering their ability to contact members of their association.
Imagine my surprise when I discover this delisting process:
” The effected IPs (the ones used to send the spam) will only be delisted when US$50 is donated to a SORBS nominated charity or good cause. The charities and good causes SORBS approves will not have any connection with any member of the SORBS administrators either past or present. ”
Now, this immediately disturbed me, so I did a google search for the definition of ‘extortion’ and came up with this. “Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to his person, reputation, or property. Euphemistically, refraining from doing harm is sometimes called “protection”.”
Now, some people online have argued that it isn’t exactly extortion because SORBS isn’t actually blocking your emails; rather, it’s the particular ISPs that decide to use SORBS as a guideline for mail-blocking.
This, to me, is bullshit. If extortion does include the reputation element, then SORBS is definitely damaging your reputation by implying you are a spammer, and then requiring you to pay money in order to remove the spot on your reputation. The fact that SORBS doesn’t get the money is irrelevant. This is a bit like the mob not trashing your business so long as you support a political party they approve of, or some other thing. What if for whatever reason you disagree with the SORBS-handpicked charities?
In addition, this particular blacklist service is totally unfair to small organizations and individuals who can’t afford dedicated servers of their own. Most teenagers, and probably a lot of adults, run websites totally out of a sense of community, and if they’re unable to use some of the resources of their website such as the SMTP server because of some asshole spammer using shared space, it’s hardly their fault. The same applies to the masses of computer-illiterates who get backdoored and zombified for the purposes of spam – sure, they’re hard on the community at large, but the problem isn’t the computer user, it’s the spammer. $50 may not be a lot of money to a big corporation but for a minimum-wage working person, that’s a quarter of a week’s wages.
To sorta sum up, I think SORBS took a good idea and a motive of protecting the community, and ran WAY too far with it. I’m sure the charities listed by SORBS are quite happy, but I doubt anyone else is. By basically extorting money in exchange for reputation, SORBS is revealing itself to be the selfish bully of the anti-spam battle, hurting anyone who happens to get in the way in its zeal to be seen as a leader in anti-spam technology and DNSBLs. To those fighting the spam battle on the ISP and hosting ends, I say fuck SORBS and use something a little more fair to the small guys caught in the crossfire.
Nate On The Net 
109 responses to “SORBS Sucks”
The IP address of my WSP has appeared on SORBS list meaning that I can no longer send mails from my private email account to mail servers using SORBS list. My WSP hosts 70,000 sites!
I checked SORBS amateurish site and to get unlisted requires payment of $50USD into some individuals trust fund (turns out the same individual runs SPEW as well). Checking other postings on this subject it turns out SORBS WHOIS info is inaccurate and the administrators are not contactable (e.g. phone is disconnected). SORBS is a racket designed to extort money from WSPs. What concerns me more is that I see private individuals buying their own .com and hosting these with companies like GoDaddy. What happens when they end up at the SORBS site? Will they have the technical knowledge to understand the pages of jargon? Or will they just unwittingly pay the $50USD into the scammers trust fund under the impression their email address has been black listed? Nice scam and sadly it is being supported by companies using SORBS service.
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I’ve just come across this horrid little extortion outfit, which has caused a nice bloke who just happens to administer a small network a lot of problems. As his managed service didn’t like email from one of his partners as the SMTP server uses a “dynamically assigned” IP (it was static I checked) he’s had no email from them for months, and was getting a ton of shit about it.
SORBS is largely arbitrary and extremely ineffective, the tone of the written material on site is that of an adolescent bully. If people want to fight spam check out Spamhaus, much nicer people no nasty fines!
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Our server got listed with them and in 8 years has never been listed on another blacklist – When I emailed them to ask why I got a sarcastic and rude response – I can understand this maybe if I was a spammer sending hundreds of these messages out but one sole incident from a professional company’s server?
They lost all respect from me after this and as the only domain that use SORBS that we’ve come across is cmail.cz I don’t think we’ll be losing sleep over the blacklist.
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My ISP’s mail server got blacklisted by SORBS recently. I followed the link in the bounce message and read all their information. When I got to the part about the $50 ‘fine’ I laughed out loud. Nice little racket. Add an IP address to the blacklist because of ‘spamming’ and then extort $50 from them to remove it. Rinse and repeat. Nice work if you can get it.
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Actually Earthlink has started using a the SORBS list. Our IP block was recently added to the SORBS list as a “Dynamic IP address” .. last I checked the mere fact that we have more than one IP address negates the whole “Dynamic” issue. Dunno .. just a heads up, Earthlink is now using SORBS.
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[…] OTD 2007-05-16 Posted by Toby Wed, 16 May 2007 12:36:00 GMT I agree with everything this article says about SORBS Charlie Brooker on thos […]
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Very intelligent, articulate and accurate writing. I wish I had written it. I hope you do not mind that I included your link in a forum message of my own.
http://logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=6072&PN=1&TPN=1
Daniel A. Seligmann
Network Operations Manager
Mags Net, LLC http://www.mags.net
Dan@mags.net (Direct Address)
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I use Comcast as my SMTP. I run a small business at home and now have been halted by SORBS for my international emails to Turkey to an ISP called Superonline. SORBS has identified my Comcast dynamic IP as a spammer and I no longer can email my friends and business associates on Superonline. I detest the $50 fine they impose and refuse to pay it. It’s the subscribing ISP’s responsibility to throttle the uncontrolled actions of this gestapo SORBS.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to stop this corruption, please post here or let me know.
Thanks
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For months now, I have been suffering the scorn of SORBS when I attempt to send e-mail with an MS Word, or Excel file attached, using my bellsouth.net account. It doesn’t happen with anything else for some reason. I run McAfee firewall and antivirus, and update almost daily, have done several deep scans and found NO viruses or worms. I believe that SORBS is actually populated by spammers who masquerade as “white knights,” trying to work both ends of the problem for their own gain. The arrogant attitude of those who respond to my e-mail at SORBS is nothing short of breath-taking. They are NOT out to help, but to scam. If they actually wanted to help, they would assure that regular users like me would have access to communication contacts with the ISPs they have blacklisted. I have contacted bellsouth to no avail. They only acknowledged receipt of my message, but have never responded. If there is a way to reign in these loose cannons at SORBS, I’d love to be a part of getting them stopped!
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Sorbs seem to be the biggest mob of incompetent fools..Many people are considering banding together to take mass legal action..
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Wow, great list of complaints here.
I agree, mail server administrators take note! Don’t use the SORBS block list! There’s plent y of evidence here, and elsewhere that it’s a worthless list.
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god I hope somebody wipes out SORBS. here is the list of complaints I sent them. If we work together we can beat SORBS…
I wish to complain that this is grossly unfair.
1)Whilst I recognise that people have a responsibility to TRY to secure their own machines, I do not think that they have an obilgation to you or anyone else.
2) From where do you draw the authority to act as some sort of regulator of the web? Who has given you this task and what gives you any right to block my legitimate usage of the web even IF somebody else has illegally taken over my machine.
3) you claim the responsibility to secure the internet resides in each computer owner. The reason these machine can be exploited so easily is because, as you know, massive corporation like microsoft release inferior software with lots of security holes. You are transferring responsibility for their ineptitude away from the corporations who cause the problem onto the user and saying we have ot pay for their incompetence. If you fined microsoft $50 instead of me you would get a better result as it would cost them billions and they would have to take more care to release secure software. however as we both know you would not have any legal ability to do this. So istead of going after the culprit you have decided to pick on the ‘little guy’ who does not have the technical or legal ability to stop you
4) Spammers employ computer wizzes who will always be one (very large) step ahead of simple users like me and 99% of people who use the web. Thus we will always have these people infecting our machines. Implying, as you have done, that anyone who uses the web has a responsibility to be an expert in securing their machine is impractical and not realistic.
5) You have set the ‘fine’ at a level which has obviously been decided with an american audience in mind. What about the rest of the world. Where I live at the moment most people are lucky of they EARN $50 IN ONE MONTH!!! I work for a charity that provides HIV education in BurkinaFaso, West Africa (www.coachingforhope.org) and $50 will pay for us to educate about 200 people in the dangers of HIV.$50 is a lot of money for us.
6) SORBS seems like a scam to get people to send $50. Nobody in their right mind will pay a company that they have never heard of to do what you are doing. It seem illegal as well as wrong.
You are saying spam slows the internet and help hackers from breaking down computers, but you have blocked me also. How are you any different from the spam that clogs p the internet? You are also stopping my usage of the internet, in the interests of protecting big business WHO DO NOT OWN THE WEB. We all own to the web, not you, not microsoft, not goldman sachs or the other ‘big banks’ that you are so worried about.
7) If you continue to block everyone and they refuse to pay your mafia-like extortion fine then we will end up with you having blocked most of the ordinary people who is the net rendering it useless apart from big business.
8) There is no way I afford your fine, or would agree to pay it if I could afford it. So thats me finished for the internet for the rest of this computers life is it?
9) Go after the spammers, not the users. Its like prosecuting people who, by leaving their front door open, have allowed a group of armed bandits to set up in their house and use it as a base to attack people form the street. Silly to leave the front door open but you can;t be held accountable for the knock on effects
10) You are blocking me from contacting my collegues. You have no right, legally or morally to obstruct my charity, or anyone elses business.
11) You liken it to a speed camera and not knowing the limit. legally if you are prosectued for speeding it is because the law of that country recognises it is a crime to exceed said speed limit. To my knowledge there is no law anywhere in the world that says I have a responsibility to secure my computer, and thus I am free to leave it unsecured if I do not have the time, money or skills to secure it.
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Yes we need to do a class action lawsuit, My comapny has lost $ because clients cant email me and I am not receving emails from clients or products that I have purchased. There must be consequences for there actions. They smiple do ip blocks now rather than going after the true spammers. This is affecting all bussniess alike. I am in for a class action lawsuit against them.
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It really is blackmail. We run an online webmail service, and had someone sign up with stolen credit cards, and send out spam.
We immediately caught them, and terminated the account, but not before SORBS decided to blacklist us.
So, in order to stay in business, I now have to “donate” $50 to some unknown person’s paypal account? Sure you can donate to your own charity, but SORBS has to agree with you. If you want quick delisting, you HAVE to pay this Joey McNicol.
Look up blackmail in the dictionary. It sure sounds like what SORBS is doing.
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We have recently added a new company and just finished setting up a new server. When we first tried to send email. What did you know, it was already listed.We need to do something about this extortion.
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OK … I posted above on May 16th, 2007. Since then, our situation with SORBS has gotten worse. However, this is what we have found out so far.
We have a close contact with the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Division as we work very closely with them. They, themselves, have had issues relating with SORBS and have had little success with meaningful communications. We are trying to make a case for International Extortion base on our stream of communications with the SORBS “team” but it is doubtful it will fly.
No one is forcing Mail Server Administrators to use SORBS so they are most likely immune to any class actions or individual suits
Unless someone in Australia, with some sort of jurisdiction, goes after them, the rest of us may be out of luck.
So …. I believe the only recourse it to come up with a strong way of discrediting them, world-wide. I have been trying to find forums to do this with no success. Any Ideas?
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I’ve been dealing with a SORBS issue for most of this afternoon, evening and early morning now. Basically I use Verizon DSL and one of their IP servers that I route through is now on the SORBS black list. I have a system admin background (22+ years with a lot of IP/web system setup experience) and it was painful digging through the layers of Verizon front-line tech staff to get close to the real system admin people. I can’t imagine what people are doing out there who (as a previous poster said), understand plumbing but nothing about web stuff.
Add my name to any class action activity someone wants to take. Something really needs to be done here. This is beyond the point of fair and reasonable. Like others, I believe now this has hurt my business since I was relying heavily on e-mail delivery to market to my customers.
Dan, I don’t know what we can do until the ISPs get to the point where they understand the magnitude of this problem. If anyone has contacts with a major journalistic outlet (CNN, FOX, etc.), I don’t know what we can do. I will see if I can find a way to reach someone like 20/20 to do a program on the problem. But really the problem lies with unsuspecting ISPs that continue to use SORBS as their blacklist filter.
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Sorbs is just full of s…. I have paid them about $600 in the last few months, they keep blocking my ips for no reason at all.
We are Bonded Certified, hebeas certified and run a double opt in list.
We mail our members newsletters 2 times a week, still they keep blacklisting our IP’s.
its good i came accross this blog.
These people have made a new business and yes when you make the payment via paypal it says “Non-U.S. Verified Business Member”.
There is no way to chec on them if these funds they are collecting are for good cause or spending in a TITTI BAR.
Well anyone interested in a class action law suit against them pls contact me.
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I find their website terribly difficult to use – sorbs / sorbes is are unhelpful and teh fee to be delisted is unacceptable. If they contacted us directly asking the ISP for an explanation and what they have done about the spam. perhaps putting in some effort would be cause reason to believe that they are legit and worth the $50. I personally will not pay that amount because it’s easy money for them to list us again and seen that we pay – they want us to be a return customers. ISP should wake up and use legit lists like spamhaus, spamcop etc. if people are in this for the money – then the motives will not be to right. They should perish indeed.
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We look after IT for quite a few customers and have had no end of trouble with sorbs. The customer IP of the mail server gets listed, can sometimes get around it by relaying through the ISP’s smart host. Sometimes that gets blacklisted causing major grief and a flood of calls to the helpdesk.
I can’t believe ISP’s/other MTA’s are using this one list purely as an allow/deny smtp connection. We use RBL in an attempt to cut down spam, but do not solely rely on one list – instead we have a minimum count, it greatly reduces false positives like this for not much if any increase in spam levels.
The sooner ISP’s/other receiving mail servers start doing this the better. Sorbs is rubbish.
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[…] and b) other people have the same problem, sometimes worse. If you have time to kill, check out this link to a blog that has a ton of responses to a post about SORBS. I looked up the Wikipedia information […]
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Count me in to the list of innocent people on the blacklist, via my regular private email address. I filled out that form to get my email addy removed from the list-it’s a little confusing, and God help people with vision problems with that confirmation code-and I wasn’t asked for a “donation”. Maybe when they respond to my request they’ll ask for a “donation”. If they do, I’ll tell them where they can put their “donation”. I also emailed my service provider to tell them about this problem and see what they can tell me.
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Newsflash: SORBS still sucks!…
Some 95% of my email comes from a good friend of mine. Unfortunately, cowboy spam fighters SORBS (who still suck badly) keep banning the SMTP servers of the ISP he uses, Clear. They’re not banning him personally, but because someone……
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Some time ago I also had a problem with SORBS. They blocked an IP address from my ISP and I happened to send mail emanating from this IP address to my members who pay a lot of money for the information that I collect for them. And suddenly some pests like SORBS decided I could no longer do my job.
When I contacted them by e-mail I received an answer that was so arrogant. I had never come across such arrogance in my life. They really think they’re God.
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I have a dedicated server at ThePlanet.com (Formerly EV1). This server is used for mail/website hosting for my clients which are all local small businesses who do not SPAM. After setting up the server, I found the IP was listed at SORBS. I contacted ThePlanet.com Support & I explained that the IP they assigned to my server must have been used by a spammer & is listed in SORBS. ThePlanet.com gave me a net set of IP’s. Those were listed too at SORBS! So I began the delisting process at SORBS. They had me make the required donations, which I did ($300! – I have 6 IP’s). Then refused to de-list my IP’s. The arrogant staff at SORBS finally got back to me after 2 1/2 weeks & told me that they listed the entire range of IP’s owned by ThePlanet.com & that ThePlanet.com will not comply with their delisting process. I guess that means that ThePlanet will not pay them off…
If you are a Server Admin or ISP & use SORBS to block spam, I don’t know who is dumber, You or SORBS. You are supporting a group of thieves & you probably don’t get a lot of legitimate mail.
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I only recently joined the “I hate SORBS club” after being blacklisted. I’m curious, does anyone actively have a handle on which organiztions and ISP’s are filtering based on SORBS? And more importantly which ones ARE NOT. It’s pretty clear that the only way to fight these guys is to cutoff there funding. Refuse to pay them and take your business somewhere else. Find and ISP that does not subscribe to and filter based on information that they provide. Better yet find an ISP that vocally disagrees with there methods. Check out their sponsors list as well (http://www.au.sorbs.net/sponsors.shtml). It’s hard to believe Sun Microsystems is at the top of the list. My one and only contact attempt directly with SORBS follows:
I have reviewed your removal requirements and despite the fact that your request a $50.00 fine to be paid to you I am requesting that you remove the IP address n.n.n.n from your blocked list immediately. Given that you have expressed a zero tolerance policy I will not elaborate on the that reason our server was compromised, but suffice to say that it was due to a previously undetected vulnerability and not due to negligence or malice. The lack of historical complaints speaks to this fact. Your organization exists for one reason. Subscribers find value in the information that they receive from you. Your authority is by proxy through the ISPs that force their policies on their users. Larger customers that run into this wall will take their business elsewhere. If you continue with this zero tolerance policy the smaller customers will eventually get tired of having their messages blocked from correspondents that they consider valid or even finding themselves up against this policy being deemed a spammer and being fined by you. In the explanation of your policy I find the traffic violation / speeding ticket analogy removed from reality. Is zero tolerance called for when dealing with drug or firearm offenses? Perhaps, but for speeding tickets, definitely not, and that is why this is clearly not the case. If it were we would not have a court system where we have the opportunity to present our case with the charges sometimes being dismissed.
I applaud your determination to clean up the system, but this is the real world where problems happen to even the most diligent, best intentioned, and perhaps even you. Your methods are extortionistic. I’m getting off of my soapbox now. I suggest that you do the same. Do the right thing and remove our IP address from your blocked list.
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My company recently contacted SORBS about their BL activities. Matthew Sullivan is answering support emails using the pseudonym “Matti Meikäläinen”.
He thinks he is really smart but you can tell by the sentence length and construction that its Matthew responding.
SORBS can’t be much longer for this world without volunteers.
It makes you wonder why he continues with such a sad charade?
I was surprised to see that so few companies are now using SORBS, the last time (2003) we had to deal with these clowns it was much higher.
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yeah 3 years of comment, wow!
yes we also got a message from “Matti Meikäläinen”. Interesting that the “big guy” himself answers the mails and calls himself “Freiwilliger” (german for volunteer) – no more real volunteers there anymore to help him with his criminal exploits??
We are a small firm of experts on car accidents and we mostly compose expertises – and of course sending a lot of these via email to our customers – we live on these!. But thanks to SORBS we no longer can sent them to one of our bigger customers… And mind: our email adress is based at one of the biggest freemailers in Germany (freenet.de)-surley no spammer!
I wrote to SORBS, and I never got a more arrogant reply than from this f—ing Matthew. He hinted that our ISP could go throu the unlisting process – i called them und of course they already knew the problem und said the they will never comply with the SORBS procedure as SORBS is very suspect to them. The only help would be, that we ask our customer, to ask in turn his ISP to no longer use SORB-Lists…
And if you want to have a real laugh: go to the sponsors-page on the SORBS-site, look bottom of page to the credits, there you find the following: “Vernon (DCC) for reminding the original author that you should not fight abuse with abuse.”
Hey Vernon you really didn`t get through that time… please please do it again (and again)… maybe S–kin Sullivan will learn it in time…
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Its 2008 and SORBS still sucks!
How does an honest business get off their list?
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My mail server got listed in their db recently and the below is their reply. very amateurish don’t u think?
That is some administration you have operating there , it’s taken you 6 months to contact us? heh!
…
…
…
Joey ( SORBS Volunteer )
Western Australia.
.. not to mention it took them almost a week to reply.
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SORBS is still manned by the same morons. I tried to send a SPAM report to abuse@canals.ro and got blocked because the NAT address I happened to be assigned by AOL was in the SORBS blacklist. When I followed the link in the returned report, I got to the SORBS site and entered a trouble report telling them they were blocking IP addresses randomly. I am not an IP neophyte. I spent 35 years working with computer programming in the telecommunications area. It seems obvious to me that IP addresses don’t send SPAM – it’s the user that sends the SPAM and IP addresses can be reassigned, but here is part of Joey’s last response to me, threats and all:
Not that you would understand but we block any IP that delivers spam to
us , the IP addresses in question here provide plenty of that to remain
listed for a very long time.
If you dont already get it by now , this is not your problem to discuss
with SORBS , you are not the registered owner of the listed IP address/s
and you have no authority to request anything on behalf of AOL or Yahoo
, but you are welcome to contact them to ask their permission to act on
their behalf.
Any further rubbish from you and you will be reported to their abuse
dept and not being able to use AOL will be the least of your problems.
—
Joey ( SORBS Volunteer )
Western Australia.
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I must be one of the lucky ones. After having my IP changed by my ISP due to technical issues I found that I was lucky enough to end up on an IP range that used to be used for Dynamic IP ranges.
My ISP only offers Static IP addresses to users, however started to add ‘dynamic’ in the hostname of these static IP addresses of recent. Probably to entice users to pay a fee to get reverse DNS put on their connection.
After getting my new IP I got the reverse DNS put on it, only to find a few days later after configuring my mail server that some of the messages I was sending weren’t being recieved. A quick check at a couple of blacklist sites around the internet actually showed that both Sorbs & Spamhaus had me in their blacklist for ‘supposidly’ having a Dynamic IP address.
The removal from Spamhaus took just under half an hour, however the SORBS one took just under a week, however having used the contact form on the site, and explaining the situation to “Matthew” I had an exclusion on my IP so I was off the list.
To those annoyed and frustrated, be patient and the system does eventually work. I may be luckier than some, but more than happy I’m now able to use my mail server without relaying through my ISP 🙂
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Sorbs, unos verdaderos piratas te bloquean tu IP sin ninguna credibilidad. Los nuevos dioses, quien es el mangante ?. Quien se lo permite?.
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Isn’t there a way to stop SORBS. There are a 124 blacklists out there (maybe even more) and the only one my server is on is SORBS. I daupt paying $ 50,00 will get my IP address removed. And even so, when they know i’m a payer, they can get it listed in a few months and get another $ 50,00.
The “charity case” they are collecting for is a 8 year old lawsuite that is already resolved.
Send a email to Sorbs sponsors. Send a complaint to the Australian govornment.
These guys suck bigtime.
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Just payed the bastards, i hope this is an easy way out.
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I agree and they really sucks.. If anyone is using SORBS then remove it from the listing; it is a useless database. All other blacklistings are reasonably good and the best one is spamcop; their procedures are standard and they reasonable amount of warnings before delisting your IP address; that saves a lot of hassle.
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Guys we need to get them banned from using sourceforge! that should be pissing them off at least – also we got 5 more names involved here.
http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=59501
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You have been crying about for 4 years. There is noting you can do pay the $50 or bitc some more and get it will take you longer to get off the list if we ever desite to take you off at all.
My Next Mercedes-Benz Is On You Suckers
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Yeah you can tell he’s sorbs! can’t even spell… lame ass.
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2009 and SORBS still sucks. They are blocking Network Solutions now! The largest and original domain provider. This guy’s arrogance knows no boundaries. Our company blocked along with millions of other customers because ONE customer sent out spam from the same ip address shared by millions. He will become a nonperson over time, until then, I educate people to make their ISP stop using SORBS or switch to an ISP who doesn’t use SORBS and let your ISP know why they are losing your business. We have to hit them in the pocket book and it will eventually trickle down to this arrogant SOB being no longer used by anyone.
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i got listed cause some mother fucker decided to use my ip address in helo request. What the fuck? where did they (SORBS) come come from? Just about any dumber fucker is able to make dnsbl services now days. i hope this guy he dies in some shit hole.
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SORBS is out of control. They have a block of addresses listed as dynamic that my upstream provider allocated to me. They are the only listing service blocking this block. It has been over a week trying to get delisted. What a joke. The only good thing is that very few mail servers use these joker’s service. Now I see why.
If you can. drop SORBS from your filtering. They are doing more harm than good.
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EVERYBODY REJOICE!
SORBS IS CLOSING DOWN!
http://www.us.sorbs.net/
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Seems to be legitimate. With any luck, SORBS won’t find hosting and will be closed down, although it seems that this is purely a financial thing on MSullivan’s part. Still, where there is one there are a dozen; I’ve encountered another pretty irritating blacklist lately – UCEPROTECT – so I’ll just hope the same thing happens to them, but it seems like generally server admins still don’t understand that DNSBLs are advisory in nature and should not be used as sole determinants as to whether or not a particular message is legitimate.
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Something interesting – It seems Michael has been selling pirated software off an internet connection provided by a university……
Edit by Nate: Referring to these links:
Google isux ROMS:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=isux+ROMs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
The top result is a /. comment
Google cache of ROMS directory:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:iea-Wfc_rVgJ:vampire.isux.com/ROMs/+isux+ROMs&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&client=firefox-a
Google cache of text used when a download is attempted:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:GGXjxNjAiLcJ:vampire.isux.com/roms-bugger-off.txt+isux+ROMs&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&client=firefox-a
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SORBS is nothing but a scam. They want you
to pay money to be delisted when they are the ones who list you in the first place. After you pay them they will just list you over and over again. No customer support and their site sucks ass. We have taken their filters off of our mail servers and I would encourage everyone to do the same. Spamhaus is much more reliable and easier to deal with and they are not a bunch of conartists like the folks at SORBS.
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Yes, SORBS is terrible. They have blocked my server 3 times without any legitimate call to.
I run a very tight, and secure server. All the sites on it are mine.
SORBS is listing my server’s IP even though it has nothing to do with the the listing. Blindly blocking a range of over 200 IP’s is just plain lazy and stupid.
I’ve never had a single issue with any other blocklist in 5 years. People just need to stop using lazy lists who block ranges.
For me, false positives are far worse than false negatives. I’d rather simply delete the occasional spam than miss important mail. Jackasses like Matthew Sullivan needlessly ruin email deliver-ability.
Fail.
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More on problems with SORBS here:
http://www.sputcorp.com/IT/SORBS.aspx
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We were recently added to SORBS blocklist, by some company we’ve never heard of.
According to SORBS it was a manual submission, and our spam count is “1”.
After going through their site, it appears the easy way to get delisted is to “donate” to Joey McNicol Legal Defense Fund. http://t3-v-mcnicol.org/ilaw/docs/PDF_5292.pdf
This fund was setup to defend against people filing lasuits on SORBS or it’s affiliates for unwarranted blacklisting of email domains. It seems this “trust” which was settled for $2.00, is basically a funnel of money for SORBS and it’s affiliates LAWYERS !
The more they get sued, the more money they are able to tap from this fund !
It seems like a no brainer that they would allow people to manually sumit anyone they choose, increasing the chances of more lawsuits…..it’s a nice racket they got going on.
We are not on any other blocklist, and i’ve found hundreds of forums where others have the same exact problem with SORBS.
I’ve instructed all of our business units and partners not to use SORBS, or they will not be able to send or recieve e-mail to our company. If I pay the $50 bucks, what’s to say it won’t just happen again and again and again !???
Our company has nothing to do with e-mail, and we don’t do “mass mailings” or commercial email of any sort.
We refuse to be extorted.
If you agree that this is extortion then don’t use SORBS….because it could happen to you too whether you use it or not.
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I’ll check this space often to see if there is any initiative against SORBS that I could participate in. I’m currently in talks with the one and only company affected by the SORBS block against my email host. I hope to persuade them to drop this “service.”
Could a volunteer non-profit Email blocking service be created that blocks SORBS itself?
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