SORBS wasn’t best DNSBL in the world. For instance, they listed all of one ESP’s net space because the maintainer had personal issues with the contact point at the ESP. As I recall, on their explanation of those blocks, they said that they were listing the space and that the contact point “is not an appropriate contact person.” So, in other words, this was not the most professionally run of blocking lists.
However, it was fairly widely used and you kind of needed to watch it if you send commercial email. The following email was sent to SPAM-L announcing the imminent demise of SORBS:
All,
Please feel free to forward this message to any other location/mailing list.
It comes with great sadness that I have to announce the imminent closure of SORBS. The University of Queensland have decided not to honor their agreement with myself and SORBS and terminate the hosting contract.
I have been involved with institutions such as Griffith University trying to arrange alternative hosting for SORBS, but as of 12 noon, 22nd June 2009 no hosting has been acquired and therefore I have been forced in to this announcement. SORBS is officially “For Sale” should anyone wish to purchase it as a going concern, but failing that and failing to find alternative hosting for a 42RU rack in the Brisbane area of Queensland Australia SORBS will be shutting down permanently in 28 days, on 20th July 2009 at 12 noon.
This announcement will be replicated on the main SORBS website at the earliest opportunity.
For information about the possible purchase of SORBS, the source code, data, hosts etc, I maybe contacted at [contact info redacted].
For any hosting suggestions/provision, please be aware that the 42RU space is a requirement at the moment, and the service cannot be made into a smaller rackspace without a lot of new hardware, virtual hosting is just not possible. The SORBS service services over 30 billion DNS queries per day, and has a number of database servers with fast disk to cope with the requirements.
Thank you for all your support over the years,
Michelle Sullivan
(Previously known as Matthew Sullivan)
[UPDATE: The announcement is also found on the SORBS website.
H/T DSNBL Resource]
[...] up to donate bandwidth and space that SORBS would be shut down in July. Other bloggers have commented on this. In case anyone was unclear on the commitment it takes to maintain a space, Michelle [...]
At 35000+ spams per day, an issue with the ESP point of contact had little to do with it.
That's not how I recall it happening.
SORBS sucked. Repeated listings of IP ranges for no reason other than ego stroking, and complete avoidance of responsibility.
My bet is somebody got pissed off enough to sic their lawyers on UoQ
@Some Guy: I second that, SORBS sucked big time, was a xenophobous and stupid RBL, and I will merrily spit on its grave when it shut down.
I have used SORBS for about 3 years for circa 500 domain names, and found their list very impartial. Sure, you have to maintain a whitelist but this is mainly because large ISPs are simply unable to ensure that outgoing spam is being blocked.
The only thing is Great ITS shut down…now how about getting all the 3rd party spam filters who reference that database to reject it and not use their cached/proxied results…what a mess
Who cares.
Sorbs stopped being relevant years ago. Please die (now).
[...] SORBS Closure Imminent. This was a post about the announcement by Michelle Sullivan that the SORBS DNSBL was in danger of closing. [...]
I would be please if SORBS could be closed. It has been an cyber robber so far. You have to pay them the get IP delisted and they would list your IP for no reason. If they don't get closed, I am going to start up a web site collecting money to sue them.
I've never seen a lawsuit against a DNSBL, no matter how poorly run, work well, so that wouldn't be any sort of suggested course of action.