APEWS Black List Lists Most of India

APEWS Black List is a joke. They have the whole netblock of VSNL, the Internet Backbone provider of India on their stupid blacklist! VSNL is, as far as I know, the only way you can get a static IP address in India. They are the first and the biggest ISP in India. So if your server is hosted in India, you are almost sure to be on APEWS blacklist. UCEProtect mirrors APEWS and charges exhorbitant amount for removal. However it isn’t as bad as it looks. Read what everyone has to say about APEWS below, same goes for UCEProtect. The bottomline is that anyone in their right mind shouldn’t even think of using APEWS / UCEProtect for spam protection. It even lists Cox.net for crying out loud!

APEWS is irrelevant. Seriously. Nobody beyond a small handful of clueless morons uses APEWS because their listings are ridiculously broad and and not supported by any type of evidence whatsoever. Unless you start getting rejections based on your APEWS listing - and I can pretty much guarantee you won’t - don’t give it another thought.

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So I can’t email my friend back home in Australia because US giant Cox cable is blacklisted on uceprotect. 26 ips from a massive provider like Cox - there’s no way it is ever going to be unblocked. This is a bit ridiculous.

It’s worth mentioning that at present, APEWS lists 38% of routable IPspace. That’s tremendous collateral damage.

I’ve yet to see a server, be it in a major ISP, or Timmy’s garage that actually rejects mail based on APEWS. I’d consider using it as part of a scoring system, but even then I’d not weigh it particularly heavily.

If you’re listed in the middle of, say a /14, realize that there are over a quarter million IP addresses in that range; odds that it’s targeted at you are miniscule…

Whichever mailserver is blocking your email on the basis of APEWS should not be doing so, since it is not a reputable list. It should not be used by anyone.

They are themselves listed on rfc-ignorant.org.

The best thread was:

I hearby request that APEWS be removed from DNSSTUFF.COM

I recently participated in a detailed discussion of APEWS on the SPAM-L list and the general consensus is that:

(1) APEWS has MANY FPs… way above the average for an aggressive dnsbl

(2) APEWS often quickly expands IP ranges to include innocent parties, including situations where those ranges expand beyond the boundries established by ARIN ranges. IOW, they expand into ranges controlled by OTHER businesses who are totally innocent and who NEVER sent spam.

(3) In the event that this occurs, there is little recourse… no removal process. They say to post a message on NANAS… but most are reporting that nothing was done after innocent parties hurt by collateral damage followed these instructions.

(4) In a recent spam-L list discussion, APEWs considered so bad, that many are now comparing it to BLARS… and many of these same people are saying that SPEWS was actually pretty good… but APEWS is really horrible. (no one knows for sure, but many think that APEWS is a recyled version of SPEWS and possibly run by the same people… so the fact that many now consider APEWS **much** worse than SPEWS means that it is foolish to transfer any possible good reputation of SPEWS over to APEWS)

(5) Many VERY big names in the industry have expressed/agreed with ALL 4 previous points… including (A) Chris Lewis, the head anti-spam guy at Nortel Networks, (B) Suresh, head of outblaze’s anti-spam efforst, and (C) Steve Linford, the head guy at SpamHaus.

Steve Linford (of SpamHaus) said:

Nobody has yet discovered even a single known ISP that uses APEWS.
Aside from a few ‘Mom&Pop’ hosts hosting ‘20 family friends and 3
cats’, there’s nobody of any relevance to your outgoing mail using it.

Most of the people listed by APEWS find out because they happen to
check dnsstuff.com, not because any mail has bounced.

There’s a flood of “Remove me from APEWS!” postings in NANAE due to
dnsstuff.com who really ought to know better than create reputation
alarms. But as dnsstuff.com lists the Spamhaus DNSBLs as being the
“SBL”, the “SBL-PBL” and the “SBL-XBL”, I see there’s few prizes for
accuracy there.

Suresh (of Outblaze) said:

apews is run by a fool, and meant to be used by fools… pure kook oil there

Chris Lewis (of Nortel Networks)
…mentioned APEWS’s:

poor quality/accuracy and apparent _complete_ irrelevance

(and this was rather nice compared to what Chris e-mailed to me in private about APEWS!)

The question might come up… why not live and let live and let the chips fall where they fall…

But the problem I have with this is that MANY less knowledgeable mail administrators will rate some ISPs and mail hosters services based on how many dnsbls that the particular business is listed on at dnsstuff.com …and APEWS listings then raise red flags on innocent IPs.

Sure… all dnsbls make some mistakes… but when a dnsbl makes as many mistakes as apews… listing MANY innocent IPs… and if/when that dnsbls provides no recourse or means for correction…. then I think that such a dnsbl does more damage than good by being included in dnsstuff.com

So I respectfully request that APEWS be removed from dnsstuff.com ASAP!

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APEWS is still listed in dnsstuff.com but comes with a warning. Nobody with even an ounce of sanity should use APEWS.