I must point out before replying that the opinions that are expressed here are my own, and have nothing to do with my employer. Else I might get in trouble.
By chance... since you lot have been particularly noisy this weekend on the subject of ORBS, I wanted to obtain a more rounded opinion of the value of ORBS with respect to SPAM Prevention.
ISOCNZ has charged myself and three others with coming up with a policy concerning ORBS and potentially other SPAM prevention methods. :-(
I'm sorry.
My understanding of the situation is as follows:-
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?
My company (Samizdat New Media Solutions) uses RBL, but not ORBS due to the political issues you highlight below.
ORBS is a similar idea, run by AB of Manawatu Internet Services. An area of concern is that ORBS uses a method of publicity to shame Open-Relay holders into changing their status. However the publicity mechanism can also be used by Spammers to work out best SPAM procreation locations. How useful is this, and are their better ways of doing it? ========================================================= Should NZ ISP's all support RBL/MAPS? (realising that there is no requirement today, other than best customer service and best endeavours.)
RBL yes. ORBS no. Due to Alan's propensity towards using the ORBS database to further his own ends I would advise people to steer clear of ORBS. Infact, I am supprised that domainz (and thus actrix) are not already in the database. Alan has repeatedly added certain unnamed ISP's to the ORBS database because of personal issues he has with these companies, and not for open-relay reasons. He also actively scans (or atleast used to) networks that are known to be dynamic IP dial-up pools looking for open relays. I agree that these people need to learn how to secure their systems, especially if they are static IP customers, however dynamic ip customers addresses will change and thus adding them to the database will be a completely fruitless, timewasting effort. Also scanning networks for open relays can be contrused as an act of war. Of course, this is my understanding of those situations, and not neccesarilly fact.
Is ORBS complementary? Is it appropriate? What do others think?
I believe, and this is IMHO ofcourse, that Alan et al have gone about this issue the wrong way. We all know that something needs to be done about this, but we don't all agree with how it should be implemented.
Should ISOCNZ but out of this matter, and stick to mindlessly boring meetings with 10,000 points of order?
You really need an answer to this? James Tyson --- Samizdat New Media Solutions --------- To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog