Status of dnsbl.tqmcube.com: DEAD

The DNSBL TQMCUBE was created by David Cary Hart sometime in 2004 or 2005. The front page of the website www.tqmcube.com was modified to specifically become the homepage of the TQM blocking list in January of 2006. August 17, 2009 update: A reader was kind enough to let me know that the TQMCUBE list is now officially dead and gone. The TQMCUBE website now redirects to the website of another list called the invaluement Anti-Spam DNSBL. Please see this page for more information. Below find my commentary from 2007 from around the time the TQMCUBE project seemed to have first gone dormant.

From 2007: Various sources and my own investigation show that the website seems to be running on autopilot with nobody at the helm.

A postmaster at a large ISP contacted me and indicated that he had received no response to DNSBL remove requests submitted to TQM. Those requests were submitted on March 27th, and it is now June 30th (2007) that I write this article.

Other data points showing that the list appears to be unmanned and likely abandoned:

  • The list's website has a "last update" date of March 11, 2007.

  • The last known response received in reply to a blocking list remove request seems to have been in February, 2007.

  • I contacted David Cary Hart via email to the address on his domain registration on June 20th, 2007, and have not received a reply.

  • I contacted the abuse desk of his ISP (Fortress ITX) and asked them to confirm that he was alive. This was on June 24th. I received a ticket number but no other response.

  • The DNSBL's experimental world zone has not been operational since December, 2006.

  • The last known sighting of Mr. Hart online appears to be here, from April 2007.

  • This newsgroup posting from Colin Leroy on June 14, 2007 indicates that Colin had last seen email from Mr. Hart back in December, 2006. The email was a message posted to a mailing list that they both participate in.

  • Others have indicated to me that they have called the telephone number in the TQMCUBE domain registration, and that the voice mail box associated with this phone number is full, no longer accepting new messages.

This thread in the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup wondering why the list's administrators are non-responsive is typical of the discussion I've come across during my investigation. I am receiving numerous reports of issues with listings going unresolved. Additionally, when checked against my personal spamtrap data (8000+ spams/day) I am seeing the effectiveness of this list trending downward over the past few weeks.

After careful consideration of all of the facts and discussion surrounding the status of TQM and its maintainer, I do not think it is wise to use the TQMCUBE DNSBL.

November 25, 2007 update: Within the past week, a large number of entries have been removed from the TQMCUBE blocking list database. The Internet Wayback Machine suggests that TQMCUBE had 1.37 million IP addresses listed on August 29, 2007. As of today, November 25th, the TQMCUBE website suggests that there are approximately 851,000 active listings.

Status of blackholes.intersil.net: DEAD

I've recently received a few requests regarding blackholes.intersil.net. According to this message to news.admin.net-abuse.blocklisting, this blocking list was retired in July, 2006. Confusingly, the zone still contains a test entry. Regardless, I've seen no hits against it in a very long time. Therefore, if you are using this DNSBL for spam blocking, I recommend you cease doing so. If you have any further information about this list, please feel free to contact me.

Status of blacklist.spambag.org: DEAD

As of Sunday, May 27th, 2007, the blocking list Spambag, with the DNSBL zone blacklist.spambag.org, is no longer available. The website www.spambag.org does not resolve to an IP address, and there appear to be no DNS entries under the DNSBL sub-zone.

Spambag, created and run by Sam Varshavchik, developer of the Courier mail server, has been operating this list since at least November, 2001.

The list had the following listing criteria: "[Spambag is my] personal list of networks who I block from sending me mail or accessing my web servers, because I believe the networks actively or passively allow abusive or antisocial behavior. Examples of what I consider abusive or antisocial behavior are: spamming, mailbombing, mail server dictionary attacks, and web page E-mail address harvesting."

I last noted a hit against this DNSBL on May 26th, at 1:34 am US central time. Note that I was not a user of this list; I simply measure its effectiveness and status, like I do for many other lists.

This post to news.admin.net-abuse.email explains that Sam Varshavchik shut the list down, and that he felt his efforts had not been as productive as he would've liked them to be.

I would recommend removing blacklist.spambag.org from your list of DNSBLs to check, as it is no longer in operation.

Spamcop BL: Take Another Look (It’s Accurate!)

If you know me, you know that in the past, I’ve made no secret of my disdain for the Spamcop DNSBL, aka the SCBL. I’ve worked in spam prevention, deliverability, and the email realm for a long time, in various capacities. I’ve created and run at least two blocking lists that you know about. Later, I helped to design and create a system that processed thousands of confirmed opt-in/double opt-in newsletter signups a day. Combine those two details together and that’s what led me to take issue with Spamcop. My employer’s COI/DOI signup servers kept getting listed by Spamcop, based on some really bad math to measure email volume thresholds and make a determination as to what to list.

I was trying to do the right thing. I was implementing what Spamcop (and other anti-spam groups) want: confirmed opt-in/double opt-in. Yet Spamcop was listing the servers and subsequent mailings regardless. It made me really frustrated, and I was very disappointed. See, it’s not really fighting spam. It’s just blocking mail you don’t like, or don’t care about. While perfectly allowed, I am of the opinion that it’s lame to do so under the banner of “fighting the good fight” to stop spam. I’ve shared my thoughts on this topic in just about every available forum—websites, blogs, discussion lists. I know I’ve personally guided many sysadmins away from using the SCBL in the past, because it was easily, demonstrably, listing things that were obviously not spam.

In February 2007, I found that Microsoft was using the SCBL to filter/reject inbound corporate email. (Note that I said corporate email—mail sent to users at micrsoft.com, not users of MSN or Hotmail. I don’t know whether or not SCBL data is used in MSN Hotmail delivery determination, but from what I’ve observed, it doesn’t seem to be.) This started me off on another rant on how ill-advised I felt this was, based on my prior experiences with Spamcop. Some kindly folks (and some less kindly) suggested that I needed to revisit my opinion of the Spamcop blocking list, because things have changed.

After a lot of measuring and discussion, I’m here to tell you: Spamcop’s DNSBL has changed, and for the better. It works very well nowadays, as personally measured by me. The open question on Spamcop was what drove me to dive into my massive DNSBL tracking project. I started that back on March 10th. Ever since then I’ve been compiling data on Spamcop blocking list matches against both spam and non-spam. Here’s what I see:

DNSBL

Spam hits

Acc %

Ham hits

Failure Rate

Spamcop SCBL

156194

49.37%

0

0.00%

Spamhaus ZEN

255521

80.77%

5

0.10%

Spamcop+ZEN

267795

84.65%

5

0.10%

Range:

~ 74 days

Total Spam

316348

Total Ham

4999

As you can see, Spamcop helps you attack nearly 50% of spam received, while affecting no legitimate senders. Very few lists do better. Spamhaus ZEN (which combines multiple lists) does better, but will occasionally have a false positive, based on some reputational issue perceived with a given sender.

My recommendation: Spamcop’s blocking list is safe to use, and will effectively help you reduce the amount of spam you have to deal with. Where I find it particularly useful is as an addition to Spamhaus ZEN: If you block mail from entities on either list, you get a 3.8% percent boost in effectiveness. Meaning, just under four percent of my spam hits are found on the Spamcop list, but not on Spamhaus.

For historical reasons only, here are links to my previous articles on Spamcop:

Spamcop Roundup http://www.dnsbl.com/2007/03/spamcop-roundup.html Spamcop BL: A blocklist with a hair trigger http://www.dnsbl.com/2007/02/spamcop-bl-list-with-hair-trigger.html Microsoft using Spamcop BL http://www.spamresource.com/2007/02/microsoft-using-spamcop-and-spamhaus.html My Problems with Spamcop http://www.spamresource.com/2003/03/problems-with-spamcop.html

Status of relays.orbs.org: Shut down, legal troubles in 2001

Remember ORBS? Short for “Open Relay Behavior Modification System,” it was a blocking list run by Alan Brown from New Zealand. (Mr. Brown ran the second version of ORBS. The first version had been run by Canadian Alan Hodgson.)

People keep asking me about the situation regarding ORBS and its eventual downfall. It happened so long ago, that I don't feel that it would be appropriate to try to fill people in from memory alone. Instead, here's links to a lot of the articles I've found regarding Alan Brown and ORBS. If you have any others, drop me a line and I'll add them to this page.
Please note that I'm not linking to any commentary or conspiracy theories put forth by emotional, anti-blocklisting “how dare you block my guaranteed opt-in email” people. There are many blocklists run correctly and appropriately. There were then, and there are now. The lists themselves weren't the problem, and aren't the problem now. Like with any other field of study, type of product, or process, some manage it well, and others do not.