[Techtalk] opinions on RBLs, please

[Kelly Martin]

Carla Schroder wrote:
> In my never-ending quest for good spam-fighting tools, I've been pondering 
> using RBLs. However I'm concerned about blocking legitimate emails, they seem 
> rather cavalier about the possibility. "If your ISP is a spammer, get a 
> different ISP." Anyone have experience with them? There won't be any relaying 
> issues for my clients, no downstream servers, just how will their own mail 
> delivery be affected.

One of our servers got put on an blacklist because our webmaster 
installed a buggy version of formmail.pl.  We caught it and fixed it 
within 48 hours, but we're still on that blacklist two years later.  The 
maintainer refuses to even so much as talk to us, let alone remove us. 
We have to run a second mail server on a second address just so we can 
send mail to account at Earthlink because they refuse to unblock this one.

I have yet to see a blacklist that was maintained responsibly.

Kelly