Spam blacklisting is out of control • Hacker News Board

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#11

Post by cgriswald » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #4

> I can complain to my hosting company and hope they evict the bad user from the network. But then why should my hosting company do so? The answer to this is the other option, leaving the hosting company. In this manner, every hosting company gets a choice - either they will kick out legal-but-immoral things like spammers, or they will not and rightly lose their above-board customers. This is essentially how the glob…

His whole defense of the hosting company's hypothetical failure to help is bizarre. He considers a lot of things that aren't his concern or even really his business. A real analysis of whether to complain would only consider whether the hosting company will be responsive and whether they are competent to fix the problem.

Why is he considering—with incomplete information—the hosting company's legal options and the severity of the spamming?

Edited to add: He could also consider whether it is his hosting company with the problem or the orgs using UCEPROTECT; although as someone who needs their emails to go through "no matter what" that can be more difficult.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#12

Post by jspaetzel » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

Any shared hosting provider is extremely susceptible to this type of issue and this type of list just doesn't work. It's a scam. There are lots of good blocklists, but there are also lots of bad ones like this.

When I worked with a company who ran email systems like this we'd always steer customers away from lists like this, in cases where we couldn't deliver mail because of it we blamed the other provider. This actually worked a lot of the time and the customer would wind up contacting the sender another way to let them know they had a problem, and fairly often they'd change lists.

Our standard messaging was something like, "Google and Microsoft are receiving our emails just fine, something is wrong with the receiving service"

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#13

Post by boudin » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #8

LinuxBender wrote: post #2

There is a typo in their title. If intentional please instead consider words like block reject and deny for the people that do not speak English as a first language. I've dealt with real time blocklists as long as they have existed. They are not going away any time soon. I agree that the paid exception lists are a bit shady but I also see the validity of their methods of temporarily punishing everyone on a hosts netw…

Yeah except we've had this recently with Linode's IP range landing on that exact blacklist and being blocked by Microsoft and other major mail providers, knocking out our ability to send to huge chunks of our customers. I've had to get the mail server moved off Linode to another hosting company as paying the ransom fee did nothing. UceProtect does seem at least as morally dubious if not more so that the spammers it a…

Which other major provider uses this list? Uceprotect is attempting to racket me from time to time. While I'm blocked i try different providers to guess the ones using this, I only found Hotmail blocking me.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#14

Post by indymike » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #4

> I can complain to my hosting company and hope they evict the bad user from the network. But then why should my hosting company do so? The answer to this is the other option, leaving the hosting company. In this manner, every hosting company gets a choice - either they will kick out legal-but-immoral things like spammers, or they will not and rightly lose their above-board customers. This is essentially how the glob…

> The answer to this is the other option, leaving the hosting company. In this manner, every hosting company gets a choice - either they will kick out legal-but-immoral things like spammers, or they will not and rightly lose their above-board customers.

This assumes that the RBL in question is a good actor. It is as bad as the spammers.

> This is essentially how the global e-mail community self-polices by establishing a norm that a host either has to work to exclude bad actors or will get boycotted/excluded for allowing them.

Most of us have ignored UCEPROTECTCTL lists for a long long time as it appears to be a money grab.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#15

Post by huhtenberg » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

> Or I can leave the current hosting company

Yep, that's the one.

If your hoster doesn't care about spam spreading from their IP space, you should take your mail server elsewhere. There's literally nothing to think about.

And if they do care about this issue, they are likely to be taking steps to remove any of their IP space from the blacklists, without being nudged.

PS.

I've been running a mail server for close to 20 years now and I do blacklist by /24 netblock on the second offense. This doesn't bounce emails though, just tags them as spam. So I had a quick look in the logs and Hetzner, Digital Ocean, OVH and LeaseWeb are all spamming a lot. LayerHost, Colo Crossing, Liquid Web, Host Winds and Servion are also close to the top. Anecdotal data, obviously, so caveat emptor and all that.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#16

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #2

There is a typo in their title. If intentional please instead consider words like block reject and deny for the people that do not speak English as a first language. I've dealt with real time blocklists as long as they have existed. They are not going away any time soon. I agree that the paid exception lists are a bit shady but I also see the validity of their methods of temporarily punishing everyone on a hosts netw…

It's "blacklist" in most languages though so the non-standard "block list" would be probably more confusing to non-native speakers. Anyway they clearly meant blacklist.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#17

Post by robomartin » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

We recently ran into this issue and were forced to change email providers. It isn’t that our host didn’t care, it’s that it is almost impossible to play whack-a-mole with dozens of blacklists.

We have been with the same provider for 15 years, no problems, ever. It seems that email delivery started to become unreliable about six months ago. After repeated attempts to fix it we had no choice but to move elsewhere.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#18

Post by sylware » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

I run my own email server, and I have _really_ a pb with smtp servers using spamhaus block lists. Ofc, to "whitelist" your IP with spamhaus (some shady andoran/swiss mafia), you must use a javascript only web engine based web browsers (I don't and I shoud not have to) in order to contact spamhaus. If this is a "chat" with their ppl, where is their IRC server? If I have to pay something out of this, this will be a lawyer to deal with the admins of such smtp servers.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#19

Post by kazinator » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

> My hosting company is competitively priced, is fast, and has served me well for many years.

... attributes which they achieve by (1) selling services to anyone and anyone and (2) not dedicating any resources to fighting spam.

So you got what you pay for.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#20

Post by prepend » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

I guess another option is to sue the blacklist operator for inappropriately including him. Or sending some legal sounding letter threatening suit.

I found some old lawsuits [0] that got injunctions and even damages awarded from being included in black lists.

I hate how the big tech customer nonsupport is bleeding into small firms attitude. “Sorry, you did nothing wrong but might one day so get fucked.” is really not something that should happen very much.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051228/1349229.shtml