[Techtalk] Linuxchix using SPEWS?

[Andrea Landaker]

I'm not sure what list this should go to (or should it just go to an admin?  I 
couldn't find contact information on the website . . .), so please feel free 
to move it if I'm off track.

I was disappointed the last time I tried to send a message to 
techtalk at linuxchix.org, I got an error saying my mail was rejected because of 
spews' blacklist.  Obviously, my IP range is listed because I'm on a popular 
cable modem network with a lot of viruses, spyware, etc, sending out e-mail, 
and I just happen to be running a legitimate SMTP server.  However, since my 
IP hasn't changed in a year, IP's in my range are hardly as dynamic as to 
require listing the whole subnet.  I don't see any way to remove myself from 
SPEW's list, so I'm left being (essentially) censored because of my ISP.  
Obviously, I can get this e-mail through, due to other SMTP servers that I 
happen to have access to, so in my case it's not dire, but it is still (in my 
opinion) unnecessary and in another way, scary.  

See http://www.clapper.org/spam/spews.html for a discussion of SPEWS' 
blacklists, and 
http://theory.whirlycott.com/~phil/antispam/rbl-bad/rbl-bad.html for a long 
discussion on the problems of RBLs (Realtime Blackhole Lists).

Is it possible to change this behavior of the Linuxchix lists?  Since the 
lists are for subscribers-only (essentially a whitelist), is blacklisting 
necessary?  I ask these honestly -- if there really is a reason for an RBL, 
and SPEWs really is the best one for the job, then that's fine, but my 
experience denotes otherwise.

-- 
Andrea Landaker
http://www.icecavern.net/~qirien/