[Empeg-general] Re: Open Relay (was BAEUG Mailing List)

[Rob Voisey]

Unfortunately the ORBS verified open relays include some of the world's largest ISP's.  In the UK this includes Demon and Psinet, therefore several hundred thousand personal and business net users are unable to communicate with anyone that blocks using the ORBS database.

Empeg use Psinet, but we run our own mailserver as the smarthost is blocked resulting in some very infuriated clients (until we worked out what was going on).

The intentions of ORBS are good, but the upshot is that if you block with it you'll lose contact with many genuine net users and still receive spam from many companies that don't rely upon open relays.

On a personal level, I also feel that ORBS is very contrary to the original ethics of the internet.  I guess those ethics just aren't workable any more.

Rob