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Trustic Anti-Spam Service To Close
An anonymous reader writes "I recently received an email from the anti-spam service Trustic saying: "We have decided to close the Trustic service. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of accuracy that we require, and an inaccurate system is worse than no system."" We covered Trustic's anti-spam service, which billed itself as "a community-based block list that prevents untrusted servers from sending spam", as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Why not just post your answer. There was nothing to flame in that, but if you found one, you obviously are trying to place your anger in the wrong direction. I've read over your ignorant post about how you were hurt; Spammers hurt us more. The ones that dont do business ; or run a website, or do anything. They hurt the average consumer by cloggin our email inboxes with crap we would never buy ( yea im gonna buy viagra from a company hosted in costa rica ) and THEY are the ones who drive up the cost you are so mad about . If your ISP doesn't want to place nice with the rest of the kiddies, they go into the corner with the other bullies. You obviously are not a sysadmin, and it shows in your ignorant post that you have absolutely no clue why blocklists do exist. Go back to 1976 please, your thinking is doutdated by almost a generation.
I don't really see where the "victim" part comes in. Your spammy ISP was blocked, as it should have been. They finally kicked off the spammer when SPEWS turned up the heat by listing a block of ip's. No more spammy - no more listy. Situation resolved. This is exactly how it's supposed to work.
What you fail to realize is that other customers of your ISP probably did not sit around and whine about how unfair blocklists are (probably because they never heard of them) - they called the ISP and complained. As luck would have it, these complaints were directed at the correct party - namely the one who is enabling and profiting from the spammer's activity. The ISP then decided they needed the legit customers' money more than the spam-money.
Also, you begin your rant with a completely unproven and frankly unbelievable premise. You imply that the spammer was "discovered and shut down" before the block was in effect. That's funny because 99.99999% of the time, it's the block that gets finally gets an ISP's attention and results in positive action. Show us the evidence file and your correspondence with your ISP to demonstrate that SPEWS blocked after the fact or, just as importantly, jumped the gun by immediately listing a large block of ip's. Guess what? You can't because the facts contradict your story. Did you even look at the evidence file? It's obvious that you didn't join the newsgroups...
All you really need to understand is that sys admins will continue to use SPEWS and other RBL's because they work. A busy sys admin desperately trying to keep up with spam traffic doesn't care about your opinion.
FYI - I have had my client's servers blocked by SPEWS in the past. The situation proceeded much as yours did. I considered it a success and was impressed that there was a tool which could actually change the behavior of ISP's for the better. The ISP in question (now one of the largest in the U.S.) converted from a spammer haven to a fairly responsible outfit - because they were FORCED TO BY SPEWS.