Spam Resource: HOWTO: Query Spamhaus Safely

Al Iverson just issued a engaging story on Spam Resource:

You’ll recall me warning recently that using Spamhaus data to protect your mail server is a bad idea if you’re using open or public DNS resolvers. TL;DR? Spamhaus is worried about too much traffic via public channels but blocking is implemented in a way that makes it effectively intermittent and potentially confusing. You could be fine for weeks and then suddenly you start bouncing all inbound mail accidentally. Or you could be querying a resolver that never shows ANY bad IPs to block, losing you out on the good spam filtering benefit that you were hoping for.Here’s what to do about that.No matter how you implement DNSBL usage, check your logs periodically. In the case of Spamhaus, look for the “127.255.255” response codes. That will indicate that your attempt to query Spamhaus data is being blocked, so you’ve got a problem. That problem is probably interfering with the delivery of…

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