James Hess wrote:
It's not the tool or list itself, but the horrible manner in which someone chose to use the list.
Exactly. We can't be responsible for what our users are doing.
Those places who chose to perform cut offs blindly based on the listing are responsible, and have their own users to answer to.. The UceProtect L3 website displays a very prominent admission of guilt (they are open about their listing criteria):
"This blacklist has been created for HARDLINERS. It can, and probably will cause collateral damage to innocent users when used to block email."
So there should be little ignorance on the matter by users. The value of the list is heuristic, for scoring, e.g. SpamAssassin score, and use of the list should be combined with an informed decision, before blocking mail from a sender based on it. Under those conditions, lists like that can be quite useful.
I will give you some more examples how it can be very useful: You can use it to block emails from systems with no PTR or Generic PTR's. You can use it to block emails from systems having non FQDN HELO/EHLO You can use it to block emails from systems which are also listed in very aggressive point blocklists (Single IP blocklists). You can use it to do excessive greylistings (i recommend at least 2 hours) to find out if the system will show up on other blocklists in the meantime. As you can see the only limit is your imagination. --- Claus von Wolfhausen Technical Director UCEPROTECT-Network http://www.uceprotect.net