You know you have some people who really think they are God’s gift to the Internet. They think they know everything and they believe that everyone should bow to their superior knowledge. Usually that is how someone who is really inferior deals with their own shortcomings.

The people who run Sorbs.net are perfect examples of the type of people I am talking about. If anyone isn’t familiar with this group you should be. They blacklist domain names whenever one of the group decides to basically.

I run a nonprofit missing children organization. Through it’s websites and blogs we provide a lot of safety information and other valuable content.

Having a name like kidsearchnetwork.blogspot.com isn’t as nice as http://www.missingchildrenblog.com

mostwantednewspaper.blogspot.com isn’t as good as mostwantednewspaper.com

There are places I don’t use ThingsThatJustPissMeOff.Blogspot.com in my signature line out of politeness, instead I use newsandmediablog.com

I can do this by registering a domain name and doing a url redirect to point at the blog. It’s much better than the longer names. When you do a url redirect, you are not actually on a web host. You can’t send email from that domain name. At least not at my registrar.

However the good folks at sorbs.net has put these three domain names on a blacklist for spamming. It says on their website that they only do that if one of their ‘administrators’ gets a spam email from one of those domain names.

Since I cannot send mail from those domain names, that pretty much makes this a false statement to put it nicely. They are causing harm to a nonprofit missing children organization due to their superior attitude and self-serving behavior.

If you type any one of those domain names into your browser you will see what I do is legitimate. That pretty much means that sorbs.net has decided to attack this missing children’s organization. I tried to deal with them through their website. But they assume they know everything there is to know.

Below, anything in bold type is written on their website or by them.

How did I get listed in the first place…?

There are many possibilities.

The IP address that you use for your outgoing mail was used to send spam to a SORBS spamtrap or administrator. Hmmm, since I have no OUTGOING MAIL SERVER I guess that doesn’t apply

There are multiple possibilities for how this could have happened:

You spammed directly. Hmmm, since I have no OUTGOING MAIL SERVER I guess that doesn’t apply

Either you are a dedicated spammer, or you operate an insecure mailing list to which the address of a SORBS spamtrap or administrator was added without their knowledge or consent. Hmmm, since I have no OUTGOING MAIL SERVER I guess that doesn’t apply

It is a shared server and some other user on the same server spammed directly. hmmm, since I am only on the domain registrar’s server and not on any other type of hosting, I guess this doesn’t apply either. And if it did, it is not soemthing I did to cause them to blacklist MY domain names.

The machine was illegally taken over via vulnerabilities in software and abused for spamming. This includes vulnerabilities on servers as well as viruses and trojan horses on end-user computers. Since Enom.com is a pretty healthy and stable registrar where in 11 years of registering domain names I have never had or even heard of this hapopening there, I guess this doesn’t apply either. And again, if it did, it has nothing to do with our missing children organization.

You are an ISP who provides supplementary Internet services (DNS, web hosting, mail exchanger) or a credit card operator who provides credit card processing services to a domain advertised in spam that was received by a SORBS spamtrap or administrator. again, not me

You are an innocent party whose IP address is listed as part of a larger range of blocked IP addresses because your Internet service provider is not taking action against other customers of theirs that engage in spamming. So pretty much you can just blacklist anyone you feel like blacklisting due to something someone else did? Since you add these manually to the databse you are liable for the decisions you make.

You inherited a listed network after your provider moved the previous tenant, who was a listed spammer, elsewhere. They may have simply moved them around in their own IP address space, or they may have terminated the spammer. At any rate, it would have been kind of the ISP to double-check whether the address block was blocklisted anywhere before reallocating it. Again, if this is the case YOU have made a choice to blacklist those domain names without cause.

SORBS will not delist you without paying the ‘fine’ for any of these reasons. So this self appointed group of gurus think they have the right to FINE someone?

However, if the listing is a part of a wider range that is blocked you the end-user are not required to pay the SORBS ‘fine’ as the entry was not generated because of your actions. In such a case only the Internet service provider involved can address the matter. Oh, how gracious of you that I might not have to pay the fine THAT YOU MADE UP!

Then the best part is to submit a delisting request, you have to provide the IP address of your mailserver or the form will not go through. They are so sure that whatever they do is correct that they didn’t allow for any other way. Hey! IF I DO NOT HAVE A MAILSERVER I CANNOT GIVE YOU AN IP ADDRESS FOR IT!

This makes it so I cannot email them to tell them they have made a mistake, because they assume that they do not make any mistakes.

If you do not know what your IP address is, please read the Support Request FAQ because you cannot be delisted without knowing it. This is simply because we are not mind readers. Any requests that do not contain the IP address(es) involved have to be ignored and deleted unread. Sorry.

The ‘fine’ was created to stop spammers from quickly removing themselves from the database. It also has the side effect of reminding people the hard way that they are responsible for their own actions. Then I hereby fine your company $100 for your actions.

Putting an unpatched, unfirewalled Microsoft Windows