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SORBS - Is There a Better Spam Blacklist?
rootnl asks: "Recently I decided to upgrade my email server with better spam detection and decided to use the SORBS blacklist. It is a very aggressive blacklist and could be deemed quite effective. However, I discovered two totally legal servers currently being blocked by their Spam 'o Matic service: a Google Gmail server (64.233.182.185), and another server belonging to an ISP called Orange (193.252.22.249). Now, normally one would think these providers would probably get themselves de-listed, but the process provided revolves around donating money. As I just happen to have a friend that is using the said ISP, I have to seriously reconsider using SORBS. What is your experience with SORBS? If you have alternatives, what would you suggest as a better blacklist service?"
But avoid SPEWS like the plague. They have a wonderful policy of blacklisting entire 16-bit IP ranges because one machine in an enormous server park has been used to send spam.
They know this causes massive collateral damage to machines administrated by totally independent companies, many of them small and liable to suffer severe hardship because of this arbitrary action. That's precisely the idea: they keep hurting non-spammers to make them lobby the server parks to deal with the spammers.
Unless you think that kidnapping children and refusing to return them unless their parents fight the mafia for you is an ethical law-enforcement policy, SPEWS is obviously far far worse than the problem they are allegedly attempting to solve.
Virtually serving coffee
SURBL is a URL blacklist.
Employing it enables your spam software to block emails that have matching blocked urls in the message body.
I have not gotten any false positives with it and it blocks a ton of nasty phishing stuff in addition to the usual SpermaMAXX crap.