have you heard of SORBS? It’s a. . . well, I’m not sure who is behind it as far as the group goes, but it’s designed to list IP addresses of spammers. Great, right? Isn’t that what we all want, to know who the spammers are and to block them?
I have wp-ban installed on some of my bloggs to block spam comments. Well, after I found SORBS I had to rethink thinks a bit.
Here’s what happened. . .
I was checking out some possible new blog sites and went to blogates and clicked on get a blog tab and I ended up at SORBS. . .ok, I though?!?!!? What is this.
There’s my IP address in some database and I need to check it. OK?!?!? Maybe it’s some security thing, I think. So I check the IP and it says that it has been flagged and will be added to the database?!?!?!?!!?
What the f’!
I do some checking and it seems this IP address was added on April 7th of 2008. Since, this IP is on Comcast and it indicates in a funny way that possibly Comcast submitted the IP. . . I have no clue at this point. I give Comcast a call to see what’s up. The tech guy tells me that he really doesn’t understand it at all because, Comcast renews IP addresses every week and my router should renew at least every month, thus that isn’t necessarily my IP address for april.
Great, I think, now I have an IP address of someone who has been spamming and now I’m a spammer by association?!?!?!?!?!?
OK. . . is it me, or does this seem a little stupid at this point?
Going back to wp-ban plugin, if you ban someone’s IP address so they can’t comment and they, like me and probably most of us, have ISP that auto renew IP addresses randomly then you will be blocking someone else later who had nothing to do with the previous comments. Maybe not the best idea?
What I’m really curious about is, how in the world did someone setup SORBS without knowing this.
OH….here’s the big catch. Do a little searching on the internet and what do you find about these guys???
In order to get your IP out of the database you need to give a contribution to some charity they specify. Sounds a lot like blackmail to me.
I guess people that use this database use it primarily as an email filter; however, if you end up with an IP address that is black listed then you may have some email problems till your IP renews and you get a non-black listed IP.
So, is it stupidity, a good spam filter, or did someone just see a great way to coerce money out of people?
