R help - Jul 2009 - r-project.org address blacklisted by anti-spam software

Dear List:

An e-mail mentioning the r-project.org address and sent to a friend at a German
university was considered spam by the local spam filter.

Its reasoning: the URL "r-project.org" is blacklisted at
uribl.swinog.ch resp.
at antispam.imp.ch. I checked the list

    http://antispam.imp.ch/swinog-uri-rbl.txt  [caution: long list]

and indeed, there it was. Can anybody explain how or why the R project made its
way onto the list? Is it reasonable to file a protest?

--Hans Werner

On 07/07/2009 5:59 PM, Hans W Borchers wrote:
> Dear List:
> 
> An e-mail mentioning the r-project.org address and sent to a friend at a
German
> university was considered spam by the local spam filter.
> 
> Its reasoning: the URL "r-project.org" is blacklisted at
uribl.swinog.ch resp.
> at antispam.imp.ch. I checked the list
> 
>     http://antispam.imp.ch/swinog-uri-rbl.txt  [caution: long list]
> 
> and indeed, there it was. Can anybody explain how or why the R project made
its
> way onto the list? Is it reasonable to file a protest?
Presumably you should be asking those questions to someone at the 
antispam site, or at the university you can't send email to.

Duncan Murdoch

--- On Tue, 7/7/09, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
> Subject: Re: [R] r-project.org address blacklisted by anti-spam software
> To: "Hans W Borchers" <hwborchers at googlemail.com>
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Received: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 6:15 PM
> On 07/07/2009 5:59 PM, Hans W
> Borchers wrote:
> > Dear List:
> > 
> > An e-mail mentioning the r-project.org address and
> sent to a friend at a German
> > university was considered spam by the local spam
> filter.
> > 
> > Its reasoning: the URL "r-project.org" is blacklisted
> at uribl.swinog.ch resp.
> > at antispam.imp.ch. I checked the list
> > 
> >? ???http://antispam.imp.ch/swinog-uri-rbl.txt?
> [caution: long list]
> > 
> > and indeed, there it was. Can anybody explain how or
> why the R project made its
> > way onto the list? Is it reasonable to file a
> protest?
> 
> Presumably you should be asking those questions to someone
> at the antispam site, or at the university you can't send
> email to.
> 
> Duncan
l I send as spam.  The ways of spam filters are extremely strange.



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On 07-Jul-09 21:59:41, Hans W Borchers wrote:
> Dear List:
> An e-mail mentioning the r-project.org address and sent to a friend
> at a German university was considered spam by the local spam filter.
> 
> Its reasoning: the URL "r-project.org" is blacklisted at
> uribl.swinog.ch resp.
> at antispam.imp.ch. I checked the list
>
>     http://antispam.imp.ch/swinog-uri-rbl.txt  [caution: long list]
> 
> and indeed, there it was. Can anybody explain how or why the R project
> made its way onto the list? Is it reasonable to file a protest?
> --Hans Werner
This is clearly a very undiscriminating blacklist. My own ISP
(zen.co.uk, highly respected) is listed! I am reminded of the
scandalous blacklist maintained by SORBS ( http://www.us.sorbs.net )
-- now happily, it seems, about to die -- whose motive seemed to be
to blacklist on the slightest pretext in order to demand exSORBitant
fees for removal ($25 per *reported* "spam"). At one time, the UK
academic community subscribed to SORBS, with the effect that I was
unable to email to any UK academic institution because my IP address,
dynamically allocated on dial-up by British Telecom, was balcklisted
by SORBS. I found a work-round, but ... . It seems the UK academic
community dropped SORBS, and now similar abandonment (see at above URL)
may prompt the welcome closure of SORBS.

General information about this blacklist can be found by going one up
on your URL to: http://antispam.imp.ch/

Your German will be better than mine, so you will be better placed
to try to find out what may be involved in getting "r-project.org"
de-listed.

Another suggestion is to ask your friend to try to get his University
to abandon antispam.imp.ch altogether, on the grounds that it is
preventing a perfectly honest domain (with importance for the work
of the University) from communicating with people in the University.

And the best of luck. In my experience, sometimes the administrators
of computing resources can be less interested in supporting their users
than in "ticking the boxes" handed down by their management -- who,
I hope, may evolve to thinking outside the box, going forward.[*]

Good luck!
Ted.
[*] With acknowledgements to Lucy Kellaway:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cb5f0fa-8965-11dc-b52e-0000779fd2ac.html

See also:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4238cace-b6f2-11dc-aa38-0000779fd2ac.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/48e4569a-cb56-11dc-97ff-000077b07658.html
and, last but not least:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7880e774-99f1-11dc-ad70-0000779fd2ac.html



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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 08-Jul-09                                       Time: 00:18:25
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