Talk:The Spamhaus Project

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Removed unsupported allegation:

Spamhaus uses a suprising discretion and is thought to perhaps accept payment for removal, for example the notorious and self-proclaimed "SPAMKING", Scott Richter, mysteriously disapeared from their listings eariler this year without any change in practice.

There's nothing mysterious. I've never heard anyone provide any credible evidence for such an allegation. It's all thoroughly explained on n.a.n-a.e., the first place where one would look for such an explanation. E.g. read Linford's and respondant posts in [the relevant thread.

Contents 1 False allegation by User:70.5.183.71 2 POV removed from article 3 Downside 4 Rebutting deleted accusations 5 Anti-Advertising slant? 6 Recent Court Case 7 Anti Spamhaus Spam (Class Action Lawsuit) 8 Current Event? 9 Corruption allegations 10 reversion without reason

[edit] False allegation by User:70.5.183.71

Spamhaus does however "suggest" that anyone wanting removal from their database purchase their overpriced feeds and software.

The above unsigned statement was left by User:70.5.183.71. It is simply false. Spamhaus publishes clear criteria for their DNSBLs, which do not in any part involve buying anything from Spamhaus. You can see the SBL listing criteria here and the XBL criteria here. (Note that XBL is simply a composite of three DNSBLs maintained by third parties, so its policy is a reference to those other lists' policies.)

Moreover, Spamhaus doesn't even sell software. They do sell a service for ISPs, which is simply a local mirror of the freely-available DNSBLs. This is a convenience for ISPs who want to use Spamhaus's lists on high-volume mail servers -- it increases throughput and ensures that the lists are always available to the ISP's mail servers. It is of no benefit to anyone who doesn't already approve of Spamhaus's policies, since its only purpose is to speed up access to the DNSBLs. --FOo 05:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] POV removed from article

I removed this from the article:

Spamhause is believed by some to be a corrupt company that exploits legitimate emailers to get off of their list.

Any verifible credibility to this? TimBentley (talk) 21:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Downside

I just added a note that innocent users are sometimes tagged as spammers because their ISP got on the list. This happened to two people I know; their only fix was to change ISPs. Any stats on "innocent victims" would be useful. If these stats exist (which I think would probably only be measurable by volume of complaints to The Spamhaus Project), then stats or anecdotes might also exist on what ISPs have had customer losses / gone out of business because they were spammers. Tempshill 18:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rebutting deleted accusations

I just reverted the addition of some hostile anti-Spamhaus advocacy text. However, I think some of it represents a mistake that deserves rebuttal here:

Furthemore Spamhouse disregards internet standards, even though it tells others to follow them. For example it says on its FAQ page that server owners should have abuse and postmaster email accounts set up on their server and that to "read postmaster@ and abuse@ mailboxes every day, and act on reports!" Yet it does not have a postmaster address, and its abuse address is an autoresponse that says the email will not be read. It also suggests to "register all domains with http://www.abuse.net" yet has not registered its own.

The standards and recommendations in question deal with sites that host email accounts, and are therefore in need of communication with other email postmasters. The standards are there to promote communication with sites that could potentially be emitting abusive email. A site that does not have email users, and does not send outbound email, simply does not have a need for a postmaster address.

In any event, these recommendations are for email-sending sites that want to ensure that if their users send abusive email, that others can get in touch with them. They are not some kind of law or dogma. Accusing Spamhaus of being evil for not following them mindlessly is a serious logical fallacy. --FOo 23:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Advertising slant?

An anecdote from a friend whose IP block is on the SBL (thanks to its previous user being a spammer). Said friend runs an internet advertising business (e.g. Google AdWords or Yahoo's Search Marketing). When making his request to have his IP block taken out of the SBL, the response was basically, "well, we hate you advertisers too, so have your ISP deal with us". Anyone else have similar or contrasting stories with Spamhaus and their interaction with advertisers? Tmurase 21:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Please give us something more than an anecdote. At the very least, a link to the site in question would help establish some context. I wouldn't want to remove their IP either, if they were hosting an Adsense Farm or polluting the web in some other way. 129.8.49.84 21:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Court Case

I personally don't have the time, but the article ought to include something about the recent (invalid?) court ruling against Spamhaus. Information can be obtained here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7757.html and here: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34415 and here: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39283356,00.htm

The ruling against Spamhaus was a simple default judgment because Spamhaus did not appear or fight the claim. In the United States under civil rules (NOT criminal) you must prove your “innocence” and you must fight the claim against you; if you do not then a default judgment is automatic irregardless of the validity claim of the plaintiff.

With that said, the court lacks In personam jurisdiction (Personal jurisdiction) over the defendant, it also lacks subject matter jurisdiction rendering the court order null and void. It is little more then symbolic. As such it can not even be used for the setting of any precedence. Bdelisle 23:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It basically isn't very important. The lawsuit is being hyped (including in email and Usenet spam!) by the spammer, but it doesn't have any effect on the operation of Spamhaus. --FOo 04:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anti Spamhaus Spam (Class Action Lawsuit)

I just saw this spam below, anyone know anything about it? -Shogun 23:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This, and the other spam attacking spamhaus from a couple of weeks ago, are both discussed on things like spam-l and nanae. I don't think it is appropriate to turn the wiki discussion page into a forum, so I won't discuss it further here. Wrs1864 01:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current Event?

Should this article really be labled as a current event? The lawsuit is current and the project is currently active but it does not seam to be a current even in itself. what do you think? zorkerz 05:17, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

If you read news.admin.net-abuse.email, you'll see that new events regarding the lawsuit are being posted almost every day. Therefore, the information in this article could rapidly become out of date. —Psychonaut 14:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corruption allegations

I have seen that a few unsourced corruption allegations have been removed here, however I recently found http://www.paulgraham.com/spamhausblacklist.html at Paul Graham's site. The article says nothing about corruption or anything similar. I think that we need to at least mention the fact that many people consider Spamhaus to be corrupt. What do others think?ConditionalZenith 04:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

That page likens blacklists of mailservers to terrorism. In his article Filters that Fight Back, Paul Graham advocates the use of filters that could bring down the webservers and proxyservers of Internet-based wikis and blogs whose links happen to be in spam, whether or not that was the intent of the spammers or the people operating the filters. By his own definition, that's terrorism. So we shouldn't trust what he writes because he is a terrorist. And many people describe him as an idiot on Usenet and on the World Wide Web. -- Jeff G. 05:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Your linked article clearly suggest using blacklists to try and avoid harming innocent servers (though I do find this curious given that his other article describes the corruption of blacklists). I don't see how you can say that article advocates terrorism. You then use your unjustified conclusion that he is a terrorist to conclude that what he says can't be trusted. And following your google links does not show the torrent of people calling him an idiot like I expected. And his WP article doesn't seem to unequivocally condemn him either. It is no surprise to see someone in his position has some detractors, that doesn't make his opinion invalid.

Other people consider Spamhaus corrupt too (and yes, you can dig up dirt on them too). In fact [1] seems to turn up more positive results than your Paul Graham idiot searches do. Anyway, we are not here to discuss whether Spamhaus is corrupt, just whether to state in the article that some people say it is.ConditionalZenith 22:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I, for one, would like to see more documentation of Paul Graham's accusations, for instance full unredacted headers and bodies of the emails quoted at Another SBL Story and SBL Going Bad?. Otherwise, it's just uncorroborated original research. -- Jeff G. 02:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, not just original research, it's defamation and unverifiable, too, and including it in the article could result in the article's listing by Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion. -- Jeff G. 03:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not proposing that we state it as fact, just that we say that some people think this. We don't need to prove opinions, just state them (with references to people holding the opinion) where enough people have them.

I think you are somewhat misunderstanding WP:OR, it refers to us including our original research in WP, not to including other people's original research (called primary sources in WP:OR). And I highly doubt that the page would be listed for deletion, we usually try to fix articles rather than delete them.ConditionalZenith 06:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As ConditionalZenith mentions, adding a link to Paul Graham's accusations would not be original research, as long as we write something like "The noted anti-spam researcher Paul Graham claims ....". It is a verifiable fact that he wrote the critisism. If we put Paul's rant into this article, it would be orignal research and largely unverifiable.

A more relevant question is, "is this like a reliable source?". Considering Paul's large financial interest in Yahoo Stores, I'm not so sure. Also, I seem to recall that Paul has long promoted Bayesian Classification as being much better than DNSBLs, so this link could easily be seen as very biased toward promoting his own systems. (Yes, Paul's systems are non-commercial, but that doesn't make the source any more reliable. I also seem to recall it was Paul who gave a talk to one of the MIT anti-spam conferences about how easily Bayesian Classifiers can be defeated by using "pico spam" that has almost no words, but delivers the spam via an image. Paul isn't an idiot, but that doesn't mean he isn't biased or that this qualifies as a reliable source.) Wrs1864 13:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I have added a link to the generic DNSBL criticisms section. Personally, I see Paul's critism to be a classic case of "I am using an ISP that was either cutting corners by not making sure that customers aren't spammers, are too clueless to tell, or too corrupt to care, resulting in everyone on the Internet being hurt by spam. This caused my ISP to be listed on a DNSBL and now *I* am being hurt. *I* shouldn't be hurt just because *I* choose to use a bad ISP." If I recall correctly, when Paul Graham's complaint came out, it was quickly documented that Yahoo Stores was indeed a haven for spammers and that Yahoo had been repeatedly warned but failed to act. As a result, the SBL listing was well within Spamhaus's listing criteria. As a result of the SBL listing, Yahoo acted and cleaned things up, resulting in the SBL listing going away. As this is really an example of the generic complaint against most DNSBLs, I think that the critism would be better, and more appropriate, on the DNSBL page. Wrs1864 13:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

While there are other complaints against Spamhaus, they all seem to be by people that are blacklisted, and I also did have questions about the reliability of the source (I didn't expect to have the source called an idiot and a terrorist though). I agree that the DNSBL would be a better place for these sort of complaints. Thanks for your helpful input to the discussion.ConditionalZenith 21:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Wrs1864. -- Jeff G. 02:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reversion without reason

In revision 102492029, JeffGent reverted a couple of revisions without giving a reason. If they were obvious incidents of vandalism (which they aren't) then I could understand.

Could you please explain what your reasoning is for reverting a few edits. I will concede that the bottom paragraph was unsourced, however the changes to the main paragraph were good edits IMHO. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ConditionalZenith (talk • contribs) 01:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

I reverted 'company, e360Insight LLC, and its President, David Linhardt' to 'spammer named David Linhardt, operating as "e360 Insight LLC"' because the appellation 'spammer' appeared to be justified by the approx. 54 current sightings of their address in spam as found at Google Groups and the evidence formerly in the ROKSO records. Sorry, popups doesn't provide reasons for its reverts by default. -- Jeff G. (talk|contribs|links|watch|logs) 18:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation.ConditionalZenith 02:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Reverted back to 108376088 as added edits by user Linhardt, "changes from spammer to direct marketer" were unsupported for above reasons. Polymorp 00:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 01:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)