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An Email Prompts New Thoughts on Spamhaus
7/10/12
By Ken Magill
I was recently contacted by a marketing acquaintance who is completely fed up with anti-spam blocklisting outfit Spamhaus.
I can certainly understand the frustration. By most accounts, the folks responsible for maintaining Spamhaus’s blacklists can be a very annoying group to deal with—mainly because they’re faceless and unforgiving.
Spamhaus runs blacklists—or blocklists, as they prefer them to be called—of what they deem are sources of spam. ISPs use Spamhaus’s listings as varying parts of their formulas in determining how to handle incoming email.
A Spamhaus listing can result in serious email delivery problems. The formula for getting delisted is very simple: Identify the cause of the listing. Be prepared to explain how you're fixing it. Do what Spamhaus says. They hold all the cards. They know it. They act like it.
Hence the recent email to me venting frustration:
“I am really tired of Spamhaus,” my marketing acquaintance wrote. “Who is this self-appointed group of people located in Switzerland that no one can contact? They smear people and companies reputations and do not give you an opportunity to defend yourself because you cannot find them.”
As I read the email, I realized I was about to be forced to do something I haven’t done in a while: Sit down and write an honest opinion of Spamhaus that marketers can understand.
Oh, I’ve written about Spamhaus enough—mostly criticism.
If memory serves, I’ve published one article showing empathy for Spamhaus’s volunteers. It was in 2008 right after spammer Eddie Davidson shot himself, his wife and three-year-old daughter to death.
The tragedy helped me see spam from a spam-fighter’s point of view and led me to try and help marketers see it, too.
That was four years ago. As I answered last week’s email from my marketing acquaintance, I thought maybe it’s time to have this discussion with readers again.
So here is what I wrote in my response:
Dear [Marketing Acquaintance]:
I certainly understand your frustration with Spamhaus. They can be real jerks. But you’re walking well-worn ground.
One reason Spamhaus won’t talk is they don’t have to. Another is they hear the same arguments over and over and over again.
Also, from what I understand, they deal with murderous Russian mafia types on a regular basis. So they’re understandably somewhat hardened and cynical.
U.S. courts have ruled that ISPs are well within their rights to set email delivery standards above what Can Spam requires.
There are hundreds of email blacklists out there, but only a few have the traction of Spamhaus. The reason Spamhaus is so powerful is that the ISPs have apparently decided its lists are reliable.
Though I’ve delivered my share of criticism to Spamhaus over the years, I have been told by numerous deliverability people I trust and respect that without Spamhaus, the email ecosystem would be a mess.
Also, if Spamhaus were to disappear, another similar entity would certainly take its place putting us in an all-too-possible “be-careful-what-you-wish-for” scenario.
Do I think the folks at Spamhaus show a serious lack of appreciation for the benefits of commerce? Absolutely. Do I think they should act more professionally? Yes.
But all told, after 15 years of covering email marketing in my work, I’ve concluded that Spamhaus’s benefits outweigh its negatives.
Sorry, but I just can’t go with you on this one. Hope we can still be pals.
Sincerely:
Ken
Any thoughts, readers? Did I get anything wrong?
Comments
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Date: 2012-08-26 21:16:07
Subject: Have you grown empathy for The Taliban as well?
The Taliban will claim that their positives outweigh their negatives as well. I see you got a long, drawn out reply from the Felonious Fugitive from Justice, Steve Linford himself. His analogy is quite flawed because 'Dave at AT&T' will never distribute content that is legally defamation and libel. 'Dave' will not photoshop images on his website and list personal DOX on you. 'Dave' is merely an agent of AT&T to benefit customers that have a contracted relationship with AT&T.
Steve seems to think he is the ultimate authority over all communications and media and that is a problem. ISPs have not made a choice to obey Spamhaus on their own free will and any Abuse Admin can tell you that they have 2 choices when they receive an SBL Listing. They can either terminate their contracted relationship with the 'so-called' spammer or they can ignore the listing. If they choose to ignore it, Spamhaus will list additional IP blocks belonging to the ISP to encourage a termination and breach of contract. They know these blocks are 'innocent' and they do this to assert pressure by affecting the other clients of the ISP.
That is effectively EXTORTION and COERCION. Not to be confused with 'free will'. Spamhaus are criminals in the United States. They are Terrorists according to the UK and US elements of terrorism. They have been successfully sued in the U.S. and they are all around jackasses. You have been manipulated if you think they earned their power. They extorted in like cyber-bullies and run their operation like Dictators.
The fact remains that Steve Linford is a marked man. His time is almost up and that is a fact! Why? Because Steve Linford picks fights in cyber-space that he would never pick in meat-space. He hides behind monitors and faceless anonymous volunteers and he is a criminal bastard. That is the reality. He is no better than Britain trying to control the media in their own country, except that he is presenting that Mafia-like activity to the rest of the world. He talks about MAAWG like they have no agenda other than to protect you from spam. That is so bogus!
MAAWG is made-up of the largest media mongers in the world. These MAAWG members are the same companies that have continuously attempted to privatize the web and control all media for profit. These Members include AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. All of which have been accused in Anti-Trust cases. They DESIRE to control...not protect. You need to get your facts straight and not let Spamhaus' pseudo-power manipulate your views.
Mark my words here on your site: 'Spamhaus will destroy themselves with arrogance within the next 5 years'. You can archive that and I'll be sure to remind the world I said it when the time comes.
If you want proof of Steve's crimes, civil judgements against him, or his abuse of the DNSBL you are claiming is admirable I have a ton of it. From ISP complaining of being 'backed in a corner' and breaching legal agreements because 'if they do not they will lose more business when Spamhaus lists more of their IP space'. Spamhaus has destroyed free media and there is a VERY large group of service providers, marketers, and others that are actively opposing Spamhaus. You will not see a ton of their content on the web, but that is another bid sign of Spamhaus' abuse of power. They literally suppress content with their blocklist. They will SBL sites that speak out against Spamhaus, make demands that forum admins remove anti-Spamhaus content, and defame anyone that speaks out against them.
If you try to sue them they will not show up to court, drag out the case in Federal Court for a decade and cost you far more money than you can afford using pro-bono attorneys. They are the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to media and it is my mission to see them fall! I do not care how they fall; whether it be a violent event or a legal event. It makes me no difference. Steve Linford is the internet's Bin Laden and Spamhaus is The Taliban. The only difference is that their terrorism is in cyber-space and their victims are tortured and killed in a virtual sense. The moment you think that they are respected by ISPs or that ISPs obey them on their own free will you have lied to yourself and I can prove that with indisputible evidence.
Date: 2012-07-14 15:13:30
Subject:
No, I think both sides -- responsible senders and responsible receivers -- DO agree on how to use the email channel, and that's sending mail to people who want it.
If you're sending mail to people who don't want it, you're not actually in the email channel. You're in the spam channel.
Date: 2012-07-13 15:41:04
Subject: Great points!
Thank you for your comments on Spamhaus. Your perspective is appreciated, and definitely gave us some food for thought at OMI. I added your comments into my blogpost today -- as I think my readers will also appreciate your thoughts on this.
As it turns out, this is an extremely polarizing issue -- but it really comes down to an opinion on how email is used -- either getting a consumers' specific permission to send them your email or using an opted-in (and consistently updated) marketing database such as ours.
At any rate, I'm not sure the sides will ever meet in terms of how to use the email channel. But the conversation about the topic is definitely spirited!
Thanks again for providing your perspective! And here's a link to my post: http://outwardmediablog.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/the-other-side-of-the-spamhaus-story/.
Date: 2012-07-11 07:03:54
Subject:
I often hear that Spamhaus is faceless or anonymous, however most of the industry who attend conferences such as MAAWG have met me, other Spamhaus executives and many of our staff. Everyone knows my name, email, and there's even a photo of me on the Spamhaus site. There is however no need for someone contacting our removals team about a listing to know other than the rep's name any personal private detail about the Spamhaus rep they're talking to, what they look like, where they live, what their home phone is or anything more than that they are an employee of Spamhaus.
When you contact AT&T customer service and speak to "Dave" you know you're speaking to someone in Bombay who's name is certainly not Dave. But it does not matter because you don't need to know anything about Dave except that he works for AT&T. Personal identity, home phone and Dave's face are irrelevant to the job Dave is performing unless you want to pay him a personal visit, show up on his doorstep to continue discussing the issue "man to man". The large number of cybercriminals we list, especially the east-European/Russian sort as you note, would love to pay us 'personal' visits as you can imagine.
Probably the most frequent argument we hear from marketers is: "my unsolicited bulk mailings meet the requirements of my local law therefore I should not be listed by Spamhaus for sending it". We've replied endlessly that our job is to list sources of spam, not pick out only sources of illegal spam according to some country's law.
The self-appointed thing also comes up a lot but honestly I've never heard it from a non-spamming marketer. It makes no sense because we have no ability to appoint ourselves into a position of trust by others, or position ourselves between two parties to filter mail unless the receiver is a Spamhaus user who has specifically appointed us as his filter system.
The commerce thing is quite the opposite, we're pro commerce and absolutely need good mailers to succeed and be the example other mailers follow. It is vital to us that responsible bulk mailers are a commercial success.
Steve Linford
Chief Executive
The Spamhaus Project
Date: 2012-07-10 19:23:41
Subject:
I think you got one thing wrong. I think the folks at Spamhaus have plenty of appreciation for commerce, since they all have to eat and pay rent just like the rest of us. ISPs and businesses are willing to pay Spamhaus for their data, because it is data worth paying for. And I'm pretty sure Spamhaus appreciates that fully.
Moreover, although a Spamhaus listing is definitely a problem, it's really an indicator that now you have TWO problems. The first one is that a lot of your mail suddenly isn't getting delivered because of your Spamhaus listing. The second, far more important one, is that this is usually an indicator that you're doing something that the rest of the email ecosystem feels the need to defend against: most often sending lots of mail to people who didn't ask for it (which we call 'spam'), but occasionally doing other sketchy things like aggregating email addresses and offering them for sale as 'guaranteed opt-in lists', or e-pending, attempting to map old name/address/phone customer lists to email addresses, offering 'list cleaning services' where you claim to have the ability to remove the complainers and spamtraps, and so on. All of those things are bad, and they're going to cause problems in other places besides Spamhaus, so whatever that bad thing is, you want to fix that.
Then, the Spamhaus listing will almost take care of itself.
Date: 2012-07-10 19:04:39
Subject:
For the life of me, I have never understood why senders insist on being disappointed by what strikes them as a bad customer service experience with a blocklist. We are not their customers.
Senders tend to forget that Spamhaus doesn't block any mail. It's the recipient domains that do all the blocking, frequently upon the advice of entities like Spamhaus, which they further temper with their own internal metrics.
If the recipient domains find that a blocklist is either over-aggressive (listing too much wanted mail) or under-aggressive (useless for blocking spam), then they don't use it, and it goes away.
Spamhaus seems to have struck the correct balance between the two, but the streets are littered with the corpses of blocklists that haven't.
Take it from a repeat offender: if a sender ever has the misfortune to find themselves listed by Spamhaus, then they are very likely doing something very wrong indeed.
Date: 2012-07-10 17:04:33
Subject:
After working for over a decade in email marketing and having dealt with the Spamhaus on occasion I can say that the volunteers/staff are more then willing to work with you when you are upfront, willing to listen and are honest with them about the issues. But just like everyone else they are tired of the same old lies so they may respond in a negative way to someone who is hostile upfront or trying to game their systems. The lists are based on their research and actual unsolicited email they receive to their own networks (but there could be other methods I'm not partial too).
Contacting them is as easy as clicking the link on their listing pages and they actually respond, unlike many other RBLs who may just ignore you completly, and that is why they are respected by the ISP and anti-spam community.
The key lesson here is - be polite and they will be typically be polite back, but send an angry letter and they will treat you in kind.