Security Basics: Re: RBLs for SPAM Control

[Alexis <bonobo () bigpond net au>]

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 02:41 am, Micheal Espinola Jr wrote:
> Before you go off to pay someone $, you may want to look into the
> other free RBL's that are out there.  I use these in combination:
>
> sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
> dnsbl.njabl.org
> dnsbl.sorbs.net
> dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net
> bl.spamcop.net
> cbl.abuseat.org
> list.dsbl.org
> relays.ordb.org
Well, this morning i discovered that the IP address recently allocated to me 
by my ISP is on the dnsbl.sorbs.net RBL . . . . :-/ i must say i'm not 
enthused about the notion of being false-positived by spamfilters worldwide, 
particularly since i maintain a tiny mailing list which sends out a news 
email to  ~20 people each day.

Of course, i could shut down my net connection, wait a bit, then restart it in 
the hope that DHCP allocates me a different IP (although there's obviously no 
guarantee that the new IP won't be on an RBL as well). But this has got me 
wondering: how does an IP address get /removed/ from RBLs? Is there some sort 
of 'time-out' period, where if there are no reports of spam from a particular 
IP after a certain length of time, it gets removed from the list? Otherwise, 
i suspect that in the not-too-distant future, ISPs will find most of their IP 
address pool on an RBL . . . .


Alexis.