Is Spamhaus Blacklist Database Accurate?

Spamhaus blacklisted 256 + IP’s over 12 spamming IP’s

[Edge]

Recently, I started getting lots of email receive rejections from customers and potential customers. Following the rejected emails instructions, it turns out that the Spamhaus organization created a very broad IP blacklist of not less than 256 IP’s. According to Spamhaus there was twelve offending IP’s in the range and that I should contact my hosting provider.

That's right, Spamhaus blacklisted 256 + IP’s over 12 spamming IP’s none of the spamming IP's were mine.. Let me clear – I don’t spam ever, not in over 18 years of operation has my organization website participated in email spam.

Communications with Spamhaus has been interesting – two ignored emails and one blaming my hosting provider for Spamhaus IP banning.

My hosting provider is fully aware and is working the issue. I have changed my email server IP and still have seen a resolution or an apology from Spamhaus.

Unbelievable….

[keyplyr]

About 15 years ago the dedicated IP for my site's mail server had been submitted and accepted by Spamhaus as a spam offender and was blacklisted. Took me a week to figure out why my subscription based newsletters were bouncing. Took only one day to get my IP address removed but they never did explain how it got labeled as spam or by who.

A couple years late I reported a spammer and somehow they screwed it up and listed me as the spammer. Again, I got it corrected quickly but was never given a reason for the mix-up nor an apology.

Haven't had experience with them since.

[lucy24]

256 + IP’s over 12 spamming IP’s

:: counting on fingers ::
You mean they locked out an entire /24 (in IPv4 terms) due to detected behavior in 12 individual IPs? Were the 12 scattered all over the map, at least? If not, it seems like overkill.

At the same time, you can see the rationale. If someone allowed good ol' cyberpromo dot com--remember them?--to exist on their servers for more than an hour, it's safe to assume the rest of the server would go bad at any time.

:: vague mental association with Gresham's law, followed by hasty detour to ensure I'm not thinking of Grassman's law instead ::

[engine]

With the billions of spam e-mails out there it's no wonder there are errors. It must be tough to get it right all the time.

I've found some of the smaller services to be less accurate and cause more problems.

When it goes wrong it can go badly wrong.

I'm not defending spamhaus, just sayin'.

[Travis]

Once Spamhaus had my home IP blocked, the reason being of too many spams coming from the "IP range" , ... my home IP is from the largest ISP in my country, ...

[Edge]

:: counting on fingers ::
You mean they locked out an entire /24 (in IPv4 terms) due to detected behavior in 12 individual IPs? Were the 12 scattered all over the map, at least? If not, it seems like overkill.

Yes, and no the offending IP's were not scattered that far.

At the same time, you can see the rationale. If someone allowed good ol' cyberpromo dot com--remember them?--to exist on their servers for more than an hour, it's safe to assume the rest of the server would go bad at any time.

Well no, I don't "see" the rationale but I do understand the frustration and have even been guilty of blocking a wide range of IP's in a moment of not thinking however, when contacted by an innocent I realized my error and changed the IP ban in my server to allow access.

Spam, hacking all of the other abuse we website operators face can challenging but, this "D.E.W." person or the entire Spamhaus organization does not appear to understand or care about doing a fair and equitable job of creating a robust spammer Blacklist. Moreover, experience has shown me that I'm likely not the first website operator to have been treated unfairly.

Spam identification services are helpful and are clearly an important utility in the battle against spam - regulation may be in order to ensure commerce and legitimate communication is not impeded by over controlling or zealous organizations.