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Closing Down ‘Spamhaus’ Could Reduce Business Efficiency

Spamhaus is a project that accumulates up-to-date blacklists of known spammers. Many countries benefit from these lists. However, if a court in the U.S. decides to close down the 'Spamhaus Project' then Australian businesses in particular will be hit by a massive increase in spam. Spamhaus emerged to help ISPs and businesses wanted to stop spam before it reaches the consumer. Its mission is to provide anti-spam protection to prevent the rush of 'unsolicited bulk e-mail'.

'Blacklists' are lists containing IP addresses and domain names that have been sending unsolicited commercial e-mail. Many 'Internet Service Providers' subscribe to these lists. When a website or IP address added to a blacklist tries to send e-mail to an ISP that subscribes to the blacklist, the mail will most probably not get through to the concerned person.

ISPs all over the world highly depend on the Spamhaus Project that claims to block around 50 billion spam mails each day. In the beginning of this month, Judge Charles Kocoras of the 'U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois' threatened to close Spamhaus operations. But Londaon-based Spamhaus said the judgment was non-relevant because it cannot be put to force in the U.K.

According to Peter Stewart, Managing Director, TotalBlock' (a security e-mail provider), the court order might initiate other blacklist organizations to close down, without whose protection there can be severe disruption of world business communications.

Blacklisting have really not been the most effective way of curtailing spam as there is often wrong listing of many innocent e-mail users. They, then, find it difficult to withdraw their names from the blacklists. However, there were always individuals either legitimate e-mail users or spammers impelling legal action against such lists.

If blacklists were not made, ISPs would be using the existing blacklist details, which when not updated, would miss the new spammers. There would be a sharp rise in crime, as e-mails carrying 'phishing scams', 'spyware', 'keyloggers' and other malware would enter millions of inboxes, unchecked. It is, thus, easy to imagine the extent of effect blacklist closures will have on world business.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/26/2006

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