Useless RBLs

[Matt]

List your favorite useless RBLs and why you do not like them here.

[trickyBizzness]

Backscatterer.org

The newest extortionist RBL on the scene. They want $98 USD for "express delisting"

"Powered by UCEProtect" another well known extortionist.

[Matt]

Here are a couple more:

Senderbase.org: They take weeks to respond if they respond at all. Seems like there is only one person running the show. They suffer from the classic problem of if there is an email forwarder on ServerA that delivers email to ServerB (for example, something@yourdomain.com forwards to something@aol.com) and a spammer sends an email to ServerA, then the forwarder does what it is supposed to do and delivers the email to your aol address. The problem is that then senderbase thinks that the spam came from @yourdomain.com not from the original sender. They do not have clear de-listing instructions nor timeframes for when a reputation will be restored.

FiveTen: They ban entire IP blocks instead of the offending servers. At least fiveten answers their email. Unfortunately most hosts do not control the servers that they have on their list which triggered the block for the entire range that was blocked. So until the IP owners that caused the problem clean up their act, everyone else suffers.

For these reasons I strongly advise other email administrators to not include these RBLs on your server checks, and use more reputable services that offer clear and fair policies. Spamhaus and Spamcop do a good job for both email administrators and email end-users.