The war on spam has taken another soldier on our side. The Open Relay Database which tracked mail servers that allowed spammers to use as relays has gone dark. While this was technology from a day gone by it was still sad to see them go.
“ORDB was a holdover from the past era when open relays were a major vector for spam,” said John Levine, co-author of “Fighting Spam for Dummies.” “Now the vast majority of spam is sent by virus-controlled zombie computers. … There’s way more of them (than) there ever were open relays.”
Lists that target zombies as well, such as one from the Spamhaus Project, have in recent times been more effective, Levine said.
The number of open relays listed at ORDB dropped in late 2004 and has largely leveled off at about 225,000 servers since then.
This was a great technology in its day. But, now it has outlived its usefulness.
This site was run by volunteers and we would like to tip our hat to them for their good work.
[tags]ORDB, Spam, Spammers, Open Relays[/tags]
