>anyway, thats what the BS in ORBS stands for, Behavor
>modification System.
I had an experience like this. I moved my email activity over to my
own LAN, using qmail, from my newly upgraded account with a "real" ISP,
using sendmail and fetchmail to do the ISP-related activity (via PPP
dial-up on my modem, etc.). That was a few months ago.
A month or so ago, my outgoing emails started getting rejected by a
set of mailing lists that are pretty much crucial to my daily work.
(These lists had been moved to a new machine specifically to allow
the host to accommodate existing customers, who might be on ORBS-listed
sites, while hosting these particular lists via qmail+ezmlm. I could
actually get email through via the old list addresses, which were
being maintained as forwarding addresses for a limited time.)
Turned out, my "real" ISP was ORBS-listed. I verified this myself
(hey, the bounce messages explained how to do it, pretty cool).
So, I contacted my ISP.
Their first few responses were along the lines of "ORBS is stupid, it
lists sites that aren't really open relays, pretty much everyone knows
this, so nobody should use ORBS listing alone just to block a site".
Having reviewed the material at the ORBS site, and not having enough
of a clue to really know who or what to trust, I told them, a couple
of times, that "well, it looks like your claim at least *was* right
at one time, but these days ORBS claims to be new, improved, and have
its act together, and the people maintaining these particular lists
are probably not entirely clueless -- consider reviewing ORBS and/or
contacting the postmaster at the mailing-list site, to learn about
whether ORBS might really have a point about your email relay".
A few days later, the problem was resolved: my ISP's site was delisted
at ORBS.
So, the problem (with ORBS, in this case) isn't necessarily a clueless
sysadmin, though it might be with a sysadmin who is so experienced
he remembers when ORBS was a bad thing. At least for me, it was
worth taking the time to patiently suggest that, perhaps, despite the
same old name, the new version was better.
Of course, the above lesson probably won't help when dealing with
people who think their relays must remain open, except in the sense
that, perhaps even with them, patient suggestions beat "you're a
clueless incompetent" on occasion. :)
tq vm, (burley)
