Slashdot Mirror
On Futureproofing Spamhaus
BMcWilliams writes "Spamhaus director Steve Linford announced a new funding plan Tuesday. According to Linford's announcement, large ISPs and big corporate users of the Spamhaus zone transfer service (renamed the Spamhaus Data Feed Service) will be required to pay an annual subscription fee ranging between $190 and $14,500.(The free public-query mirrors will continue to exist.) The point of the new plan is to ensure that 'the millions of users who rely on our anti-spam systems can be assured we'll be here for as long as spammers plague the Internet'."
Is this a Self-Elimating Business Model?
The point of the new plan is to ensure that 'the millions of users who rely on our anti-spam systems can be assured we'll be here for as long as spammers plague the Internet
As they eliminate spam, spam becomes less profitable, thus decreasing the need for them. Not only that, but the less spam, the less people will request their services, as they can do it in-house. What do you guys think?
Lets get it out of the way now....
1. Block spam
2. ????
3. Profit.
There. Are you trolls happy?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
This story makes me think of GRsecurity. Remember? It's dying because the developer didn't have any funding? Maybe Spamhaus caught wind of this, and is trying to avoid a similar fate.
Only the purest of souls seek enlightenment. Everyone else just wants power.
Just as soon as this $54Mil bank transfer goes through for this poor Nigerian widow.
Heh... I love it, it shows that not too many folks understand about how Spamhaus operates, and may be relying on distant memories of the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS). Both organizations, Spamhaus and MAPS, have operated on a free-to-all, volunteer-run system, accepting donations where they could be had to fund themselves. Back in July 2001, MAPS moved to a fee-based for all (except for educational and single operator systems, which could sign a waiver and have free access) model, while Steve Linford kept MAPS in its free-for-all state, where it continues to operate today.
However, several large users, including world governments, have voiced their opinions that they love what Spamhaus has done, however, how can they rely on a free service that may not be in operation in a year or two due to legal shenanigans like what Richter is pulling against Spamcop??
That, in a nutshell, is what's happening here. No one has ever paid to use Spamhaus other than through voluntary contributions. This changes nothing, the blocklist service and website will still remain free to all comers, and those that have large userbases that want to depend on Spamhaus as a going concern can help by paying a fee for use of a zone transfer service to their own database or dns servers.
Simple, ain't it?? The little guys win, the big guys win, the spammers lose.
If Spamhaus eliminated Spam, Steve Linford would be the first one dancing. He'd probably get a knighthood, but I think he'd prefer a good night's sleep.
MS claims that Hotmail receives 2 Billion spams a day. (That's 2x10^9 to you friends across the puddle). I don't see that going away, more's the pity.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Spamhaus advises organizations set up a zone transfer if they're receiving 200,000+ e-mails per day. I doubt the average user (or small organization, corporation, etc.) will be receiving that much e-mail in a day (at least for now...)
Don't they mean, as long as e-mail exists; in it's current form, anyway?
Even then a lot of businesses may actually save money through reducing bandwidth costs due to spam. I hope they don't force those savings onto you... :)
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Are you suggesting that ISP customers are entitled to a service for nothing?? If customers are unhappy with a (probably tiny) increase in ISP charges to address the problem, they can always switch to a cheaper ISP ... and
learn to enjoy their spam.
I get maybe one spam e-mail a day.
And how many extra spam e-mail do you think you would you receive if AOL stopped using the Spamhaus RBL?? (If AOL doesn't use the RBL the question is moot anyway.)
If a corporate IS department is running their own mail servers, it would be wll worth the money. Transfer the lists into the server and check all incoming mail instantly instead of the latency caused by going to Spamhaus. The bandwidth and time saved for someone like GM, GE, Siemens,..... Thats a lot of money saved. $14,500 is pocket change to them anyway, and if it saved $50,000 over a year, thats a good return. I'd bet it would save a lot more than 50K though.
The fact that it keeps Spamhaus a viable concern is another plus.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
1) Everybody has a use for this. If you are part of an organization that uses a paid for spamhaus, then you have a use for it.
2) Spamhaus recommends organizations that get 200,000+ emails a day sign up for the service. Conservatively, I think, we can estimate that would mean 100,000 users ( some get considerably more, most not at all ). At the high end, it's 14,500 a year. So, 14500/100000 = 14.5 cents a YEAR per user. I'll give you a fiver, if you shut up about the cost for the next 30+ years about it.
3) Say I'm way off, and the number is more like 20,000 users. That puts us at about 73 cents per year per user.
If you really can't afford that, how the hell are you able to sit here on the internet and gripe about it?
4) Spam, annually, costs you way more. Or, more accurately, they cost your provider more, which in turn, gets passed on to you. So what they are doing is a cost saving measure.
So, in closing, let me say this: Stop bitching, you are wrong.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I may be an idiot, but it seems to me that most organisations could justify any of the amounts listed by doing some simple cost benefit analysis.
My understanding is that Spamhaus allows you to blackhole IP blocks that are known to tolerate\encourage spam.
If you step back and work out the cost of bandwidth to accept all of that spam, versus the cost to pay Spamhaus to blackhole it, it probably works out in favour of paying for Spamhaus.
Here in
Spamhaus recommends organizations that get 200,000+ emails a day sign up for the service. Conservatively, I think, we can estimate that would mean 100,000 users
Just for reference, PSU has roughly 130,000 users, and averages around 4,000,000 emails a day (actually that number is about a year old, I imagine it is considerably higher given the microsoft viruses and spam that are going around now)
Finkployd
"$190 and $14,500"
This takes the sound bite "prices may vary" to a new level.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
You are confusing Spamhaus with SpamCop...
Spamhaus has no affiliation with IronPort!
One can wonder whether additional funding will have the effect of actually having the records reflect the realities. The trouble is that I know of at least one record (SBL6024) that is filled with errors and despite several attempts at having Steve correct them, all that happened was a bunch of insults in response.
/29 belonging to Wild Rhinos nameserver moved to their record (SBL14379) - or similar. I know it would not delist anything (that's not the issue) but it would correct the information and that's what's important here.
All content in that record except *one* line is completely wrong and/or severely outdated. The bad content reflects an old customer long gone (booted late 2002) whose IP-ranges were mixed up with Dynamic Pipe. All that remains valid is a single nameserver (freya.wildrhino.com) belonging to a different customer/alledged spammer: Wild Rhino.
If the info should be correct that entire record should be removed and the
But Steve does not want to admit his mistakes here, and one can wonder just how many other records in his system are equally flawed, mislisted or plain false. If the incorrectness is rampant throughout, one can wonder just what these businesses would be buying. I think Steve needs to learn a bit about humility and responsibility before he starts making money big-time on this. Because making money off lies and false pretenses has always been the domain of those he claims to hate the most: SPAMMERS.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Gee, I leave my tinfoil hat off for just one lousy week and there's not just one but multiple world governments. I was just getting to grips with overthrowing a few national governments.
Do I get to choose which world government I'm under? Given the choice I, for one, would like to welcome my new illuminati overlords.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
SPF is not a Microsoft technology. Caller ID is the Microsoft solution (similar but different). SPF was designed by pobox.com. Microsoft and pobox.com recently agreed to make SPF and Caller ID compatible, but they are still different methods:
1. SPF is text based; Caller ID is XML based (even though no other email header or DNS record is).
2. SPF verifies the envelope sender; Caller ID verifies the From header of the email. While both will be the same in many cases, they do not have to be.