[ On Friday, January 14, 2000 at 12:24:32 (-0800), J.D. Falk wrote: ]
Subject: Re: Fw: Administrivia: ORBS
Unfortunately, ORBS does not allow for people who DO know about relays, and DO close them, and don't want to be scanned anymore. In the ORBS world, that simply isn't an option.
That's where most of the sane anti-ORBS sentiment comes from.
("Sane" obviously does not include folks who actually do have open relays.)
Besides all of what Kai has said (thanks!), there is one other point that makes me wonder if even the "sane anti-ORBS sentiment" isn't just more self-spreading ignorance and ill-informed rhetoric. That point is that those of us who use ORBS are not about to believe anyone, especially these days, just because they say they've cleaned up their act and fixed all of their open relays. Those systems and networks that are listed in ORBS may have been (ab)used to spam before (usually*), and we're not about to believe the first SMTP HELO greeting we get from them without first confirming with ORBS that they have been, and remain, fixed. We reported them for independent testing to ORBS after we were spammed by them and we insist on the due dilligence of ongoing automated spot checks to ensure they stay fixed. If a site blocks ORBS after being cleared then we have every reason to believe that they are indeed hiding something ugly under the carpet and we'd rather reject all e-mail from them with no prejudice than risk getting any more spam from them. If your mailers were abused, reported to ORBS and listed, fixed, and finally cleared from ORBS then please don't prevent ORBS from testing them again in the future -- that is your guarantee that we won't individually block your mailers again with our own private lists. It also means that you won't accidentally get added to ORBS own manual database section and thus experience similar difficulties in getting removed again. (* obviously not every system listed in ORBS has been used to forward actual spam of course -- why even I have a test machine listed in there for test purposes! ;-) -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>