A who’s-who group of anti-spammers recently published a rebuttal to a claim from someone who said he had been on the receiving end of some bad behavior by anti-spam blocklisting group Spamhaus.org.
Jonathan Ezor claimed in an online discussion forum that he knew “first hand how Spamhaus will threaten to block list an entire hosting company in order to get the host to shut down a Web site Spamhaus has decided is a spammer, and [that he] also received caustic e-mail from Spamhaus when [he] wrote on behalf of a wrongly blocklisted client.”
Ezor, an assistant law professor at Touro College’s law school in Islip, NY, had allegedly sent Spamhaus a legal threat on behalf of a client who claimed to have been wrongly put on Spamhaus’ blocklist.
The anti-spam community’s rebuttal on behalf of Spamhaus included the contents of what they contend is the sole e-mail from Spamhaus’s executive director Steve Linford to Ezor. The e-mail says more about these people than they apparently know.
Here it is:
“From: linford@spamhaus.org
Subject: Re: Urgent Letter Regarding Improper SBL Listing
Date: 2 June 2004 09:37:27 GMT+02:00
To: jonathan@removed.inv
“Hello,
“When your client ceases employing spamming as a marketing method, your client will be removed from our database, until then your client will remain listed, it really is that simple. Legal threats serve only to inform us that rather than stop the spamming, the entity hopes to attempt to scare us into allowing him to continue with the spamming. (name removed) engaged the services of not just one, but two extremely well known professional spammers listed in our Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database: (name removed) and (name removed) to market their products. Spamhaus lists not only sources of spam, but also resources of those who directly profit by it.
“If (name removed) doesn't like the reputation it is making for itself of being a purveyor of spam, and the consequences of spamming (being listed in the SBL), may I suggest you direct your legal effort at those responsible for your clients situation: the professional spammers your client is hiring and whomever in your client's organization hired them to spam for your client.
“Regards,
“Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org”
This is an e-mail from someone who obviously thinks he cannot make mistakes. There clearly is no appeals process for the recipient who may or may not legitimately think his client is not spamming. The idea of any type of dialog is nixed up front.
Moreover, the idea that a company will only resort to legal threats if it is a spammer and wants to continue to do so is ridiculous on its face.
Critics contend that the problem with even the most responsible blacklist operators is that there is no recourse for mailers who think they’ve been wrongly listed, and that anyone who finds themselves on one of the lists is treated up-front as a spammer until they can prove otherwise.
That such a prominent list of anti-spammers would publish this letter as evidence of measured behavior indicates the critics are right.
The entire document can be accessed here: http://www.spamhaus.org/archive/documents/community_response.html
