On 11/10/2021 9:58 PM, Michael Peddemors via mailop wrote:
On 2021-11-10 11:47 a.m., Rob McEwen via mailop wrote:
The only issue here is that, for every user/customer that needs a
unique key, an entirely different set of data has to be loaded into
memory on the server. That's a huge limitation. It doesn't "scale".
Therefore, for invaluement, in our new-ish direct query system (that
started in 2018), that uses such unique keys for each DNS query
customer, I had to basically custom program rbldnsd to overcome this.
It took dozens of hours of very frustratingly-difficult programing,
but that's partly because I'm not very good at C++! (by doing this
myself, that was especially helpful for keeping this very hard-earned
expertise in-house and very guarded!)
Not sure why we/you should keep it 'inhouse', as it seems that all RBL
operators are adopting a similar strategy.
We need more co-operative opensource collaboration, and ensure that
RBLDNSD doesn't end up with twenty forks, so it gets even better
performance, and simply has an option to treat all queries to a
'keyed' subdomain, either to be served a single data source, or
individual data sources, based on a configuration item ;)
And of course, the DSO support ;)
Already, the source/git are in too many multiple places. Whatever
happened to giving back to opensource? I think you are building on
other's 'hard-earned expertise' as well.
(1) I give back in other ways - some you don't know about - but,
coincidentally - there are some interesting upcoming announcements about
how/what invaluement is giving back - coming soon - I'll be sure to send
you an alert about those upcoming announcements when they happen!
(2) interesting how this argument always gets applied to entrepreneurs
who aren't at all wealthy, but rarely to BigTech companies who are
insanely wealthy. Should Google reveal their search engine tech secrets?
Can we apply this to Apple? Microsoft? Amazon? Meanwhile, the DNSBL
industry has taken many hits lately because much of our pool of
potential customers has massively shrunk in recent years - most business
have migrated their email hosting to large providers such as O365,
G-Suite, and to a lesser extend large companies like ProofPoint,
Mimecast, etc - some of them are bringing in literally hundreds of
millions, or even billions, in profits from email. I've lost count of
how many subscribers invaluement has lost in the past few years because
they moved their email to G-Suite or O365 and then no longer needed our
services. So I'm not really in the mood to be told that I don't give
back enough!
(3) In the past few months in particular, it's been a struggle for
invaluement precisely because so many spammers have started spamming
MUCH MORE OFTEN via freemail accounts - ESPECIALLY GMAIL. So this means
that they're essentially doing an "end run around" invaluement data, and
that has harmed our business. It's directly causing fewer signups and
even a dip in renewals (which are normally very strong). So to deal with
that, I've spent the past few months doing a massive amount of
"unbillable overhead" work - literally hundreds of hours, maybe into the
thousands - working around the clock - developing an addition to
invaluement that is basically a hashed email-address DNSBL (for
authenticated email addresses, not forged ones). It's very close to an
official release, and I'm very excited about the quality of this new
list. I know invaluement isn't the first to create such a list, but I'm
confident that this will be one of the best ones, if not the best one.
Releasing this should be a big boost to the overall health of
invaluement - but if this didn't get done - and we continued to lose
relevancy/effectiveness due to so many spammers migrating to sending
spam via freemail (especially gmail!) - much more often than they've
done in previous years - invaluement would be run into the ground within
MONTHS! (months, not years!) So maybe go pick on Google for not
"sharing" more source code and not sharing more trade secrets? (This
came an an inconvenient timing - that was basically chosen FOR us by
Gmail's spam volumes! I was originally planning to expand our new SPBL
data in other ways.) But, thankfully, with this new data that is near
release, I think that invaluement will do well in the long run - but
it's been a struggle in the meantime.
(4) Is LinuxMagic software opensource? (not saying it's not, just
curious now)
--
Rob McEwen, invaluement
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