[Mimedefang] [OT] SBL

[Kevin A. McGrail]

My experience is summed as this:

BlackLists have a very high false-positive rate.  Too high to be used for
outright blocking.

Additionally, they have little centralization and a lack consistent
procedures and parameters for removal.

I use them for SA scoring but would never recommend blocking.  I like using
them with the SA rules that require 3 or 4  BLs arithmetically to get a
positive score.

Our server of ours ends up in random blacklists every few months because of
some moronic blacklist administrators and I know DFS has had the same
issues.  It was always nice in the past having people refuse to take
www.spamassassin.org out of a blacklist, sigh.

Regards,
KAM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Josh Kelley" <josh at jbc.edu>
To: <mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 10:46 AM
Subject: [Mimedefang] [OT] SBL


> I realize this is a bit OT, but I've seen SBL recommended here before,
> and I'm not sure where else to ask...
>
> I'm trying to reconfigure our mail server to start blocking spam instead
> of tagging it with SpamAssassin and trusting our users to set up their
> own filters based on SpamAssassin.  Blocking messages based on the SBL
> seemed like a good first step.  In the week or so since I've started
> using the SBL, it's caught about half of the incoming mail to our
> campus, but it's also caused 4-5 false positives (a spammer's company
> that happens to put out a good newsletter, legitimate mailing lists
> hosted by spammers, a legitimate company that uses a spam-friendly ISP
> as their hosting provider).  This surprised me, since I was under the
> impression that the SBL was probably the most trusted and most
> conservative of the blacklists.
>
> Should I give up on blocking via the SBL?  Or should I just accept that
> if I'm going to block mail, I'm going to block a few legitimate ones by
> mistake?  I know that others on this list use the SBL - have you had any
> similar problems?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Josh Kelley
> _______________________________________________
> Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca
> MIMEDefang mailing list
> MIMEDefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
>