1 LOL! "concerted attacks"! Hmmm....Linkmistress of Chaos has just taken on a whole new meaning....

2 so the Ping Tsunami is a WMD?

3 That is exactly why I started a blog... to undermine integrity. I had my little hat with the light on it, and a canary, and the cutest tiny pickaxe...and I met these guys, there were seven of them, kind of short but a girl can't be too choosy these days. Werid names, too. But they said they already HAD a girlfriend, some lazy tart who sleeps all day. She's probably on some kind of drugs. A hi-ho.

1 I can understand people's frustration with SPEWS. However, the problems associated with it are two fold. 1. By SPEWS own specification, you aren't supposed to block mail from ISPs on the "watch" list. These are ISPs that are under closer scrutiny because of past problems, or because of new "sightings". Unfortunately, there are a lot of mail servers configured to block the these "probationary" listings. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes because of a lack of understanding of how SPEWS works. 2. SPEWS, by it's very nature, does include collateral damage. When an ISP refuses to get rid of spammers, the block range is slowly increased to include more and more of their internet "real estate". This is a meant to force spam friendly ISPs to reconsider their position. Keep in mind, SPEWS does not block a single ip address. It is merely a list of IP addresses owned by spam friendly companies. It is the system administrator of the mail server that refuses the mail that has implemented the block. Personally, I don't use SPEWS. I do, however, use several other blacklists. Spamhaus.org is one of my favorites. I also use a few country blocks lists. Specifically China, Korea, and Nigeria. Using just those few blocks has cut my spam down my a huge amount. Adding SpamAssassin into the mix and refusing spam with a score of 10.0 or more results in almost no spam. The only thing slipping through now are the two line spams, e.g. "Click here for the latest viagra, englargement, mortgage" etc. Actually, I have the ultimate blacklist now that my server suffered a hardware failure. In a couple of weeks I should have new hardware and can get back to tweaking my spam filters. BTW, the spammers have raised the stakes. For the last few weeks there have been DDoS attacks against some of the more popular blacklists (spamhaus.org included). These attacks seem to be coming from sobig infected systems. The anti-spam community is now trying to convince law enforement that they need to get involved. Unfortunately, it looks like the Feds only care if someone is downloading music.