I'm not sure that this line of discussion below is on-topic, so if I'm
wrong to follow up, please whack me:
This is a listing service that, for a setup up fee and so much per
month,
will accept lists of IP addresses.
Not an accurate representation. It's an accreditation service which
researches, verifies, and accredits IP addresses which are listed in
the database. Senders do indeed pay a monthly fee for listing, which
is how it is supported so that we can make it available for free for
receivers to query. There is no set-up fee. There is an application
fee if the senders are not otherwise known to us, and fairly well,
through industry channels. That fee is used to do a background check,
check references, etc., as part of the accreditation process.
These types of IP based white-listing
services existed well before SPF.
IADB is not, emphatically not, a whitelist. The information contained
in IADB about the IPs and the mail flowing therefrom is purely factual
and objective, with no value judgement made at all, nor expectation
about what querying sites will do with that information - use it to
accept mail, use it to reject mail, use it to figure out lottery
numbers - it's entirely up to the querying site. That's the whole
purpose of IADB - to put as much _factual_ information into the hands
of the querier as possible so that they can make informed, educated
decisions and choices about how to process email coming from any given
IP address (whereas whitelists and blacklists tell you whether you
should accept or reject that email).
Anne
Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
President/CEO
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of SJ
Committee Member, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop