Multiple entities have offered more than $1 million to buy SORBS, according to the troubled controversial anti-spam blacklist’s proprietor Michelle Sullivan.
As a result, Sullivan wrote in a post on SORBS.net, the blacklist may not close on July 20 as she had said it would in an earlier post.
According to a report in The Australian, offers have come in from around the world, some topping $1 million and some from “dubious” organizations.
In an e-mail exchange with this newsletter, Sullivan wrote that though SORBS, or spam open relay blocking system, is a free service, some unspecified vendors make money using it—hence the offers.
“If SORBS disappears, their revenue will be impacted significantly,” she wrote.
In her original post on the subject, Sullivan wrote she would probably have to shut SORBS down because the university that had been donating server space had decided it could no longer do so.
“It comes with great sadness that I have to announce the imminent closure of SORBS,” said the post. “The University of Queensland have decided not to honor their agreement with myself and SORBS and terminate the hosting contract.”
Like the all-volunteer anti-spam group Spamhaus, SORBS maintains a number of lists of what it deems to be sources of spam. E-mail systems administrators can reference these lists to help them determine if e-mail coming into their systems is likely to be spam.
According to The Australian, Sullivan said the highest "legitimate" offer for SORBS was about $1.2 million. Others were for much more but from unscrupulous quarters, the report said.
"There are many spammers with deep pockets who would love to get their hands on the list but I would never sell to these people because if they got control of the database it would be utter chaos,” Sullivan said, according to the Australian. “We would only deal with reputable buyers."
