Re: Paid RBLs in default?

On 2026-04-25 at 17:13:16 UTC-0400 (Sat, 25 Apr 2026 14:13:16 -0700)
Ted Mittelstaedt <[email protected]>
is rumored to have said:

> Why is this a problem?
>
> I understand a number of years ago when Spamhaus decided to charge 
> they set the former free stuff to report -everything- as spam to 
> encourage people to stop querying them

THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

If it had, I would be the first person to zero out their SA rules. Such 
things HAVE been done by others, sometimes intentionally and sometimes 
accidentally when shutting down. It's a reckless, incompetent, and rude 
choice that Spamhaus has never made. Spamhaus had some brief glitches of 
"listing everything" or nearly so on their automated lists but it has 
been many years since the last such event.

You are likely thinking of some other former DNSBL operator. The 
TrendMicro version of MAPS may have. SPEWS did it. Gordon Fecyk did it 
with the list he started after leaving MAPS. NJABL did it. There's a RFC 
specifying how to NOT do that when shutting down. Spamhaus has had some 
brief glitches of "listing everything" or nearly so on their automated 
lists, but it has been many years since the last such accident.

To this day, it is possible for a low-traffic mail server to use the 
Spamhaus lists without registering or being blocked. You are better off 
registering for the (often free) data query service to avoid being 
treated like an anonymous user and it includes data sets that are not 
part of the free DNSBLs.

> However, I just installed SA - using defaults - and it's not marking 
> every piece of mail spam.  So I have to conclude that either SA 
> removed that rule or Spamhaus stopped doing that.

THEY NEVER DID THAT. NEVER.  **YOU ARE SPREADING LIBEL**




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