One of my IP's has been listed on the Spam Cannibal DNSBL, apparently because they consider my PTR (host-203-98-84-115.dynamicinternet.com.au) to be too generic.

What the ...?

I'm really getting sick of these trumped up, wanna-be's and their capricious reasonings!

I ended up on another RBL recently because the word "dynamic" appeared in my hostname - boy did I have words with them. (To their credit, they removed me immediately once I blasted them)

But Spam Cannibal won't even consider removing anyone once they've made the decision to list them.

They contradict themselves on their web site as to the reasons they list IPs.

Their home page says "The ONLY way you can get into SpamCannibal's database is by sending spam or virus ladened email to our mail servers!"

But when you dig a little further into the situation they say "Your host is in a spammy netblock and has a missing, generic, or identical (non-unique) PTR record. These IP's are NOT eligible for removal until provisioned with a distinguishing PTR record. This is the most common reason for refusal of removal requests. Don't waste time requesting removal of IP's with generic or missing PTR records. Provide a distinguishing PTR record or configure your mail host to use your ISP's smart relay."

The IP in question only runs one domain, which hosts my WHMCS installation, I certainly have never sent spam from it and it is not in a "spammy netblock", because the adjacent IP (203.98.84.114) isn't listed.

My only consolation is that very few people use this ridiculous RBL and most of the people who will be receiving mail from this IP are our own customers who's email we host anyway so the effect of being listed is negligible, but man this sort of nazi-ish, non-cooperative attitude gets me frustrated.

Thank you for letting me vent

PS. I would have told them this directly if they had the guts to put some contact details on their web site.

When I submitted their removal form, the page that displayed told me they weren't going to do anything about the problem (See the quote in my previous post)

So, the only recourse they have left me with is to whinge in public - which I don't like doing, but when I have no other option ...

This is interesting - GENERIC PTR Record Criteria

So I have to change my naming convention to suit their arbitrary "rules".

That sucks, might just be a good idea to change the RDNS on the IP which sends mail to something not generic (such as the real server hostname).

Yeah, that's what I've done. I'll wait until the change has propagated and then try again.

I really can't work out how I got listed in the first place.

The only thing I can think of is that I occasionally get spam submitted to my WHMCS ticketing system. If the spammer set his return address to one of the Spam Cannibal spam trap addresses, the resulting ticket confirmation could have triggered the block, but the chances of that happening are so remote as to be almost nil, I've only had about 5 spam tickets in the last year.

Sounds like SORBS and their rediculous extortion racket - I can't believe Michelle got away with it as long as she did.

Well, I changed my PTR and submitted the removal form and I'm off their list.

So that's a happy ending.

I'm still a bit concerned about how I could have been listed in the first place.

The fact there is only one domain on this IP - and it belongs to me - enables me to say with a high degree of certainty that no spam has been generated from the IP.

Anyway ... there are more important things to worry about

Sounds like you've had the run around Mike!

Sounds like Spam Cannibal have been doing some wrong lately, after doing a little research - apparently you're not the first!

Good to know you're back on your feet now though!

Cheers,
Guy

Hey Michael. On reflection, when we typically setup servers, we setup forward and reverse DNS entries for the main interface IP to that of the hostname to avoid these issues.

However your issue is the other IP addresses on the server? Which we typically leave as the default ISP setting.... interesting.

I can certainly see your point of view here and understand your frustration. I think publicly slamming them and discouraging usage by your recipients (which an indepth explanation of course) is probably the best cause of action.

I had a snicker at this...

"If a few large ISPs were to install SpamCannibal, spam would rapidly vanish."

They seem to be missing the rest of that sentence "... as would half of the legitimate email you would be receiving!"

ROTFL Indeed