Per Jessen wrote: > John Rudd wrote: > > >>> The server is in Germany - anyway, I can't be bothered to deal with a >>> mailadmin who rejects based on blackholes.us ... I just curious given >>> the staleness of the data. >>> >> If the server is in Germany, then I don't see how staleness of the >> data matters. >> > > It doesn't as far as the rejected mail goes - but it does matter wrt the > usefulness of blackholes.us. Which is all I'm asking about. > True. Although this is the SpamAssassin mailing list, so, within context of scored systems, the blackholes.us might be of some use. That said, if you're using SA, it's much lighter weight to use the RelayCountries plugin.
blackholes.us also has some application in sites that are by law prohibited from exchanging data with certain countries (ie: military contractors). Of course, such sites should be using more accurate and fresh data. ie: maxmind's geoip services. However, I will agree with you that blackholes.us is oft abused by brain-dead admins who simply think "I don't know anyone in Germany, so I'm going to blacklist it"... You also get the same effect with European admins blacklisting whole major US ISP's (ie: verizon.net, comcast.net, etc). Both result from a failure to recognize that high spam volume isn't always due to being a spam domain..It could just be a really large number of people there, and if 1% of them have bots, that's a lot of spam. A small ISP or country with 50% infection rate would be much less noticeable. But then again, the nature of statisics and distributions is usually way beyond your average "MCSE in a week" boot-camp graduate. >> For two: >> The mapping of IP to country doesn't change often. Thus, the data is >> likely to appear to be "stale" just because it doesn't need to be >> changed frequently (if at all). >> > > None of the data at blackholes.us have changed for 18 months. > Hmm, that's sad. They might not have run any imports lately.. It's kinda a small volunteer project AFAIK. \ >> So, while you may feel like you can't be bothered to deal with a >> mailadmin who rejects mail based on the sender being in Germany, >> that's kind of what you're left with: if you're trying to fix this, >> > > I'm not. I'm only concerned about the apparent staleness of the > blackholes.us data. Does anyone have any info on that? Nope. But I'd be more interested in information that the staleness was resulting in inaccuracy.
