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darobin (1316)

darobin
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http://berjon.com/

Journal of darobin (1316)

Sunday August 25, 2002
06:55 PM

spews.org

[ #7304 ]

Does anyone have an opinion on the spews.org anti-spam system? They appear to have started using it at my mum's office but it would seem that it catches a lot of false positives. They also seem to be rather pretentious, not really willing to provide ways for one to get out of their listing even though it's clear that there do make mistakes.

If anyone has a good set of arguments to convince the admins there to drop that apparently stupid thing and move to SpamAssassin (apart from the fact that SA rocks), I'd love to hear it.


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  • Well, we had the unfortunate situation where our IP range was blocked by SPEWS, who was actually blocking 4 whole Class C blocks to stop a porn spammer who was using a server that our ISP was hosting. It was a very frustrating situation [google.com] because we were getting legitimate e-mails bouncing back by those who used SPEWS as spam blockers. Our only fix was to move to a new IP range...

    Jason

  • It works, and I like the idea, but it is too restrictive. I don't think that blocking whole countries is a good practice.

    On the other hand, mail admins --- I like being one --- are the ones who should decide on what they can or cannot use in their systems. If the company's allow losing customers due to SPEWs restrictiveness, then why not?

    I particularly don't use that in any system, but I like their idea --- I just don't like the exagerated way they do the blocking.
    --
    -- Godoy.

    • I have been a mail admin as well (though probably not a really good one because I hate that job) but I would never use an over-blocking system. I very much dislike spam, but I could only ever use a system that has no or at least very close to none false positives. We all get to filter noise in our lives, be it in conversation or in normal mail, and I'd rather have a little spam (with large obvious chunks fitlered) and all my legitimate mail than no spam but lose some legit stuff.

      That's why I think

      --

      -- Robin Berjon [berjon.com]

      • I don't use spews for the same reasons, as I said before.

        And, with regards to writing them, I think you'll waste your time. I've been reading NANAE for a long time, and many people there like SPEWS. Many other don't. Most people don't use it for the same reasons we do: too many false positives.

        But, as I also said, I agree that sometimes only a full denying to an ISP is the way to make them fight in-house generated SPAM.

        --
        -- Godoy.

  • Funny you should mention that.

    As darobin, at least, knows, I admin the Paris Perl Monger mailing list. I had a run-in with SPEWS today, and was about to write up my adventures in my journal and perchance happened to check what other friends had added new entries, and so came here.

    What has happened with pm.org is that its address [64.49.222.22] belongs to the same C class as bulkbarn.com, apparently a known spammer [spews.org], and SPEWS had the entire class marked down as belonging to bulkbarn.com. I suspect this i

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