On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 17:08:20 +0000, Andy Smith <andy@lug.org.uk> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 07:00:48PM +0200, Kurt Petersen wrote: > > sorbs is now blacklisting sites because they guess that it is a > > dynamic ip number. > > dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net has been in existence for a long time (years). The list began life as a properly-managed list run by Easynet. When Easynet shut their list down in 2003 it was incorporated as the seed of the current SORBS DUHL (information from the SORBS website). Unfortunately the Easynet management was not transferred along with the data... > > <sxxx@xxxxx.dk>: host mgw.netsite.dk[193.29.201.11] said: 554 Service > > unavailable; Client host [213.237.12.137] blocked using > > dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net; Dynamic IP Addresses See: > > http://www.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml?213.237.12.137 (in reply to RCPT > > TO command) > > > > My IP number is 213.237.12.137. > > The reverse is 213.237.12.137.adsl.vby.tiscali.dk I am having the same problem. My mail server is neither an open relay nor a source of spam, but the IP block containing it was blacklisted by SORBS on May 18 purely on the grounds that the owner of SORBS doesn't like the look of the generic rDNS for that block, which is of the form "userXXX.adsl.metronet.co.uk". (My own rDNS has "pigeon" for "userXXX".) <http://pigeon.dyndns.org/stuff/crapstuff/sorbs.html> This was particularly worrying on a personal basis as it coincided with UK Online having a problem with their mailserver's spam filtering, which resulted in ALL email being spam filtered even if the customer had turned off server-side spam filtering. Since UK Online uses SORBS (presumably because the list originally run by their parent organisation Easynet provided the starting point for SORBS), and my father is a UK Online customer, the result was that my father thought I was ignoring his emails for a month (until I found out what was going wrong) and thought I was ill or worse. Needless to say this was a highly undesirable state of affairs. When I looked on the SORBS website and discovered that it arose because some jumped-up college kid seems to think he has the right to dictate how everyone else configures their mail server, I was, as you can imagine, incandescent with rage. No other blacklist lists my IP or the block containing it. And rightly so - I am not an open relay and do not send spam, which I hate as much as anyone else. It seems that only SORBS manages its allocations on the basis of the owner's personal prejudice. > > There is no indication of a dynamic IP number - and it is not. It has > > been fixed for many years. > > If it is truly static, as in, you will always get that IP, that is > used just for you, no matter if you switch off your DSL for a week > then back on again That is the case for my IP block and indeed for all ADSL customers of my ISP <http://www.metronet.co.uk/>. > and your ISP complies with all the other rules > that SORBS likes to enforce then you could possibly get this > decision reversed. The rules are ridiculous and arbitrary. I don't see why either I or my ISP should have to jump through ridiculous hoops to resolve this problem, especially given the arrogant, unhelpful and uncommunicative nature of the SORBS management as evidenced by innumerable Google search results and the SORBS website itself. SORBS's requirement of a payment of $50 for a delisting - whether or not that would apply in this case - is also very likely to put an ISP off. They could be liable for a similar extortion over every IP block they own... Will my ISP *really* be willing to set a TTL of 43200 on the DNS records for my IP when they use something different as standard? I doubt it... Nevertheless, I have tried getting in contact with my ISP to try and get them to get the block delisted, as an ISP probably has more clout than a private individual. Unfortunately, their response was that the IP block is "listed as dynamic" with RIPE because some other customer might get my IP in the future if I cancelled my service, and therefore they think the SORBS listing is correct. It seems from your comments to the OP that you would disagree, and certainly I can't find anything in the whois output for 213.162.113.17 that would indicate either dynamic or static allocation; the description is nothing but "ADSL connections". I would appreciate your comments on this situation. I also suspect that since the forward DNS of my IP - pigeon.dyndns.org - is a dyndns address, albeit using dyndns.org's "static DNS" service, that will not help matters. But since I have been using this domain name for a few years now I do not want to change it; nor am I happy with the idea of RIPE publishing my postal address for the world to see if I should formally register a .org.uk (or similar) domain. > On the other hand you may find it easier to get the people you mail > to whitelist you or stop using this DNSBL. Not a realistic option. The problem is not caused by individual users' use of SORBS but by ISPs who use it to indiscriminately filter all mail through their servers. It is, shall we say, not easy for a private individual to get an ISP to change its policy. I have a backup dialup account with UK Online myself so I can still get internet access when away from home, and am therefore entitled to submit support requests to UK Online; this is how I found out that their spam filter was, as the result of some bug, active even for customers who switch it off. I have suggested to them that they should not use SORBS due to its inaccuracy, unprofessional management and personally-biased listing policies, backed up with half a page of URLs to webpages which demonstrate very clearly that SORBS causes more problems than it solves. I await the response with interest but not a great deal of hope. > Or even easier, you could smarthost through a machine which does not > a have a reverse DNS that looks like any old domestic DSL. (Not > saying you are wrong to do what you do, just that you are overley > optimistic to expect it to work that well in today's Internet) I have enabled routing through such a smarthost as a workaround for specific sites which I know to be afflicted by SORBS. I do not regard this as anything more than a temporary and unsatisfactory solution. Nor do I regard it as overly optimistic to be able to send directly from my own server; I never had a single problem with that method before May 18. The ONLY problems I have had have been due entirely to the SORBS listing made on May 18. The DUHL page on the SORBS website says that the owner of SORBS thinks that everyone should be made to route their mail through a smarthost. I object violently to some arrogant little turd trying to force me to onfigure my mail server in accordance with his personal prejudices. > Let's not have the SORBS thread again, hey? I am sorry if this is repetitive - although I have been a Debian user and debian-user list subscriber for many years, I have not been subscribed to debian-isp and only found this thread as a result of Google searches for information I could use to back up my requests to the two ISPs that I am a customer of, UK Online to cease using SORBS, and Metronet to get the IP block delisted. However, since it was already a huge thread when I found it, I don't feel too guilty about adding one more post :-) In addition it seems - from your comments about the OP's IP "If it is truly static..." that you may be able to provide some useful advice on how my IP block is "officially" regarded and Metronet's comment that it is in some way regarded as dynamic even though the IPs are statically allocated to customers. Cheers, -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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