| "They're a really mixed bunch. You've got some seriously dodgy, vigilante type situations, where someone has decided this ISP has too many spammers... and they just blacklist the lot." |
The problem is, as some see it, the people who run them. Many have been accused of over-zealousness; their operators black-listing entire netblocks of thousands of users because one person had spammed from the range.
"They're a really mixed bunch. You've got some seriously dodgy, vigilante type situations, where someone has decided this ISP has too many spammers... and they just blacklist the lot," Mason says.
However, Mason insists blacklists are a valuable tool.
"You've got the other ones like the Spamhaus guy. They're really careful to avoid false positives," he says. "They do a really good job of tracking real spammers... we definitely use those guys."
It isn't just irate network operators who have a problem with blacklist maintainers. Spammers, not surprisingly, have a beef with any technology that messes with their turf. The services are frequently bombarded with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks aimed at rendering them completely ineffective. Some of these attacks have been so serious the services have shut down altogether.
Osirusoft, a blacklist operator, closed its virtual doors in August last year after being bombarded with DDoS traffic. Not only does this make an online service very difficult to operate, but can result in site maintainers being hit with massive bandwidth bills to cover the flood of onerous traffic.
One blacklist that puts fire into the belly of many a network operator is the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS). Often described as the cowboys of the anti-spam scene, a basic Google search reveals many, many gripes.
Tired of being "zonked by the spineless anonymous cowards at SPEWS," some have even resorted to supporting an anti-spews movement designed to counter the group's radical tactics. SPEWS has been known to black-list entire providers, such as Telstra, due to a relatively small amount of spam originating from such networks.
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