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Re: [Asrg] Round 2 of the DNSBL BCP - "collateral damage"

2008-04-01 23:20:34

On Apr 1, 2008, at 11:09 PM, Matthew Sullivan wrote:
No, the intent is to do *something* that could be to block and/or
filter, it could also be to indicate an address that should not be
filtered (granted it would not be called a blocklist in that case),  
but...

Your statement was 'that a blacklist does not block email is... wrong'
and you refer to intent as the supporting factor.  An example of why
that statement is wrong: the original intent of the OPM was to block  
IRC
connections, not to block email.  The OPM's original purpose was to
block IRC connections and not email. (Two similar but actually  
different
statements).  People found the OPM was good for blocking spam as well,
so they - the users - made the OPM entries block email, not the
operators of the OPM, and before the users did that, entries did *not*
block/filter/score email.

At which point if an opm admin added an IP address to the list,
mail was blocked. If they removed the IP address, mail stopped being
blocked.

The operator of an email blacklist can cause email to be blocked
by a direct action of theirs. They can also cause email to not
be blocked (by use of their list - it may still be blocked for other
reasons, of course) by another direct action of theirs.

It is true that if a blacklist is not publicly known or has such a
poor reputation that literally nobody is using it to block email,
including the operators themselves, then the operators actions
will not block mail or otherwise cause it to be filtered.

At that point, though, it's not a blacklist, and it's out of scope
for this group.

The power of a blacklist operator is given to them by the users
of the blacklist, and the more users there are, the bigger those
users are and the more directly they use the data (i.e. packet
filtering vs a 0.01 spamassassin score) then the more power the
blacklist operator has.

But that power to block email is wielded by the blacklist operator,
and the use it to block email.

Cheers,
   Steve

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