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Long-Dead ORDB Begins Returning False Positives
Chapter80 writes "At noon today (Eastern Standard Time), the long dead ORDB spam identification system began returning false positives as a way to get sleeping users to remove the ORDB query from their spam filters. The net effect: all mail is blocked on servers still configured to use the ORDB service, which was taken out of commission in December of 2006. So if you're not getting any mail, check your spam filter configuration!"
Why don't they just close the server so it no longer accepts connections? Are they doing this to stop the server currently at that location from being hammered with requests?
It's one thing for a spam filter to make a mistake or even be careless and put a message into the spam folder, but quite another for a filter to intentionally cause known good messages to be absent from a users inbox. Why don't they just start reporting all messages as good, or just not give any rating to any message? This might be especially bad in situations where ORDB is only given partial weighting in the spam categorization process so that many messages still get through, thus making it less likely that the errors will be noticed quickly because there will not be a total block on email. To do what they're doing might be considered wreckless. I don't know much about the law in a situation like this but I'd be worried about liability even with a good disclaimer in the user agreement.
It's like hotlinking an image off someone's website after you've been told not to. Yes, the site owner is a dick for replacing the pic with goatse, but it's still your fault for linking to it in the first place.
/. word will get out soon enough.
This will cause some confusion at first, but if it hit
I just hope no one's spam filter defaults to automatic-deletion.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When I had a run-in with my old ISP a few years ago, the issue was that a) they did not advertise anywhere that they weren't accepting mail from blacklisted peers, and b) mail from blacklisted peers was simply discarded. There was no 'administration interface' to '"release" the mail and/or mark it as safe.' There was in fact no way for the recipient (i.e. me) to ever know that a mail addressed to them that had not been delivered had even been sent.
That said, the approach of ORDB does seem to be the right way to stop administrators from using it. If you don't force the issue by stopping all mail, then random non-spam emails will continue to be blocked indefinitely. Short-term pain for long-term gain...
the only person to blame is the careless mail admin who leaves ORDB in. ORDB is a free service, they have every right to take it down, hell i'm pretty amazed they left it up for a year and gave all the warnings they did.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
As much as we can rail against stupid mail admins, I think it would not be remiss of us to remember that the ultimate sufferers are end users who probably have no idea what their mail server administrator is doing. In other words, this hurts the people who *rely* on mail administrators, not the mail administrators. For that reason, I think ORDB is doing the wrong thing. This is yet another reason why privately owned spam registrars like ORDB are a bad idea; they just do not understand the either the gravity of what they are doing, nor do they have the responsibility to take it seriously. If you are doing something on such a large scale, it is inevitable that there will always be stragglers. Don't get all indignant about how "dumb mail admins" should know better unless you know that all your utility providers abide by the latest best industry practices in their respective fields.
On a side note, given that this move by ORDB specifically targets people other than those who they want to change the behaviour of in an attempt to get those innocent bystanders to affect change upon the real people they want to affect, this actually meets the FBI's definition of terrorism.
I hate printers.
It was the only way to get them to stop and if I check my server today, I will likely find I am still getting some requests on them. So it's not dickish at all as another commentator claimed.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
When someone just plain will not check back to see if your free service is still working (and free), how else do you get their attention?
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Saying "A girlfriend? Proof positive that he's not a regular /. reader" is modded Insightful? Since every mention of "girlfriend" receives this response like clockwork, Redundant seemed more appropriate... Well then, I have some more Insightful tidbits for you:
Jocks are idiots.
Linux users have tiny penises.
Windows users are point-and-drool morons.
Mac users are artistic and gay and think overpriced computers are status symbols.
Business execs and politicians don't know fuck-all about computing or networking, but insist on controlling them anyway.
Women are shitty drivers (they themselves have fewer accidents, hence they receive a better insurance rate; they're shitty drivers because they do annoying shit that creates obstacles for others, like not knowing what the fuck the passing lane is for).
Black people are either from the ghetto, or act like they wish they were.
White people have zero sense of rhythm, can't dance, and can't jump.
Now where's my +5 Insightful?
Blocking with an error code is the Right Way. That way the sending mail server generates a bounce message and the sender knows that the message didn't get through. The idea of accepting every message so the user can have 50,000 messages in his spambox that will never get looked at for every real message is absurd.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.