Vanguard said:
Yes, SPEWS did become unavailable. SpamPal and other programs using it
had to remove it from their list of DNSBLs.
No, Osirusoft became unavailable. SpamPal and other programs were
referencing Osirusoft's SPEWS listing, but Osirusoft was not the
"main" host -- it was just the most commonly used one at the time.
There were other sources for the SPEWS DNSbl list that never went
down. People who knew where to get them (and anyone who did just a
little bit of research could find this information) could keep their
SPEWS listings updated even when Osirusoft went offline.
Perhaps SPEWS moved or has alternate sites
SPEWS has always been multi-homed. They havn't needed to "move",
though some of the mirrors shift about from time to time.
At one point, if you had SPEWS included in the blacklists then *everything*
got marked as spam; when they went down, they returned *.*.*.* as a spam
source so every e-mail was spam (rather than just turn off their list
and list software timeout waiting for no response).
No, this was Osirusoft's doing. Osirusoft used more than just SPEWS
for filtering in the first place, so using their DNSbl as an entry
already blocked more than what SPEWS listed. SPEWS has NEVER listed
*.*.*.*. Osirusoft's listing was an independent action of their own,
people using SPEWS listings taken from other locations weren't having
that problem.
SPEWS was never responsible nor responsive; it was *their* list which you
could if you chose.
Well, that's true.
I remember trying to ask others (who program to use their list)
on how to determine *when* they had added a suspected site, and *when*
they did their updates. I could see records but nothing about when
anything was happening. Was the record old, new, obsolete, you didn't
know. That's like reading an online news article that has no date.
Relevance wanes over time.
SPEWS actually does act fairly quickly when an ISP cleans up its act.
The key, however, is that the ISP must actually clean up their act.
Results, according to their website, may take 24 to 48 hours but
actual experience saw listings vanish within hours or even minutes of
an ISP reporting that it had taken action.
As for entries being added, it's a matter of when the SPEWS spamtraps
get the spam in the first place, and what the ISP does to subsequent
complaints.
SPEWS didn't disapper. The main website went offline. That's it.
The website was just an information zone.
and since I didn't care for their 14-year old attitude towards the effects
their lists would have,
The effect of SPEWS listings, as well as reasoning for this effect, is
well documented on SPEWS's information site. I don't consider it a
"14-year old attitude". I consider it desperate measures for a
desperate situation. SPEWS does what it does because such drastic
measures are needed thanks to criminal ISPs like Cogentco.
I just never bothered even checking if they were available again.
Well, if you had, you would have seen that they were never
"unavailable" in the first place.
Neither has SpamPal bothered to list them again.
Interesting. I'll look into that and find out if they're aware that
they just need to look for SPEWS's lists in a different location.
The other lists work just fine for me.
Then use them, by all means. I'm just letting people know that SPEWS
is not, and never has, been unavailble since its inception.
