On Mon, 8 May 2000, Roger De Salis wrote:
Paul Vixie contributes to/manages???? an RBL repository of Open Mail Relays on the side of www.vix.com. ie MAPS and RBL. How many carriers (even carriers with only 6 staff...) in NZ piggyback off this effort? And contribute?
CLEAR Net's Mail+ product includes inbound mail filtering using the MAPS RBL.
ORBS is a similar idea
The MAPS RBL is a database of mail relays which are known to have been abused; ORBS is a database of mail relays which are promiscuous, and hence have the potential to be abused. The most common criticism I have heard of ORBS (aside from allegations of port scanning and unprompted relay testing) is that spammers might use ORBS as a directory of open relays through which to distribute UCE. In this manner ORBS can be seen as an offensive tool against victim mail relays which _don't_ protect themselves using ORBS. Incidentally, the word on the street is that ORBS is not usable in anything other than a hobbyist environment, since it causes too much legitimate mail to be discarded. The various MAPS databases, on the other hand, whilst catching less spam, reputedly suffer less from false positives.
Should NZ ISP's all support RBL/MAPS? (realising that there is no requirement today, other than best customer service and best endeavours.)
I think ISPs should do what they want, and customers should choose ISPs based on what they can do for them. I cannot imagine an environment in which mail relays would be _required_ to refuse connections based on any particular blacklist.
Is ORBS complementary? Is it appropriate? What do others think?
If you use ORBS as a list of open relays, then the only question is whether it is accurate and up-to-date. If you use it to selectively refuse mail, the further question arises of whether _all_ mail distributed by an open relay is necessarily spam.
Should ISOCNZ but out of this matter, and stick to mindlessly boring meetings with 10,000 points of order?
What do ISOCNZ hope to do? They have no mandate to regulate ISPs and private mail relays, and any endorsement of any particular blacklist of ISOCNZ is probably of little interest to anybody else (isn't it?) Joe --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog