Re: [SURBL-Discuss] Nice article on SURBL and note about weekends .....

[Jeff Chan <je...@surbl.org>]

On Monday, March 7, 2005, 12:38:19 PM, Chris Santerre wrote:

> Wow this is even a better article!

> <http://etdeliverability.typepad.com/chips_deliverability_tips/2004/10/brand_names_und.html>

> Perhaps we should get in touch with the people of Pivotal Veracity?? Check
> out this paragraph:

> "How does this affect you? My friends at Pivotal Veracity who offer
> phenomenal new technology for tracking email deliveries to top ISP's
> recently completed a study on the topic of SURBL's and deliverability. They
> found that emails containing a blocked URL were blocked entirely at 5 of the
> 20 ISP's tested, while 7 ISP's moved the email to the bulk folder.

Wow, so we're reaching 12 of 20 ISPs they tested.  That sounds
kind of high at this point.  They may be crediting SURBL where
other URI blocking technologies are actually being used, such as
AOL's.  OTOH SURBLs are (quietly) used by some of the largest
ISPs and webmail providers on the net at this point.

> Also,
> their tests showed that emails with blocked URL's were filtered to bulk or
> discarded at 50% of medium to larger enterprises.

50% of businesses also sounds too high.  I don't know what the
SpamAssassin and other mail filter deployment is like however.
And the list of applications using SURBLs still continues to
grow, seemingly daily:

  http://www.surbl.org/links.html

> Pivotal Veracity's new
> product, eBrand Monitor (also offered via ExactTarget's Inbox Detective),
> helps companies detect blocking before it causes problems."

> For those keeping count, that leaves 8 ISPs that need a LART ;) 

> I suspect this is why Jeff always yells at me to get our FP rate lower! But
> I love how the article ends. Clearly shows legit companies that they need to
> keep track of their affiliates, because they can and will hurt their brand. 

> --Chris 

I've added the following comment to that article:


"Any legitimate mailer who finds their domain listed on SURBLs is
welcome to submit a report to whitelist at surbl.org. They should
include full and complete contact information for their
organization, information about their sending servers such as IP
addresses, a sample outbound message with full headers and full
message body including URIs, and a description of their
organization and its published mail practices, especially
including published anti-spam policies. We typically unlist
organizations that do not make large-scale use of spam. 

Generally speaking those who don't spam will never get listed on
SURBLs, and our false positive rate is very low. 

Jeff Chan
http://www.surbl.org/"


And yes, we do need to get the FP rate lower, especially on WS.
:-)

Jeff C.
--
"If it appears in hams, then don't list it."