On Wed, Jul 28, 1999 at 12:41:33PM -0400,
Dave C <djc@???> is thought to have said:
>
>
> On Wed, 28 Jul 1999, Martin Stewart wrote:
>
> >
> > > Is it harsh, or should I simply remove relays.orbs.org from my rbl_hosts
> > > list?
> >
> > I'd encourage it, speaking as someone who has seen a number of
> > legitimate mail hosts rejected by ORBS repeatedly.
>
> ORBS doesnt try to list only "illegitate" mail hosts, it lists any
> hosts which are misconfigured (usually by default becuase sendmail came
> that way or unintentionally becuase there either is no real sysadmin or
> the sysadmin is not clueful regarding the matter) to permit open SMTP
> relay, since these are often abused by spammers, as we all know. The
> object is to providers the owners/operators of those hosts to
> reconfigure their server to not permit abuse of that manner.
>
> You might want to have a closer look at the site at www.orbs.org.
If the point is to block spam, then using ORBS results in a lot of false
positives since anyone with an open relay is listed regardless of whether
they are being used to propagate spam. If the point is to block open
relays (and let the users of systems which have open relays know so that
they can bug their admins to fix the problems) then ORBS is great.
Personally I submit open relays to both ORBS and radparkers as
appropriate.
I think the original poster's use of "legitimate" was in reference to
those false positives for catching spam rather than a characterization of
ORBS' policies.
Tabor
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Tabor J. Wells twells@???
Fsck It! Just another victim of the ambient morality
