A Cut And Paste from the site.

The easynet blacklists/spamfilters (blackholes.easynet.nl,
proxies.blackholes.easynet.nl, dynablock.easynet.nl,
spamdomains.blackholes.easynet.nl, and the easynet spamlists) will be
discontinued starting Dec 1 2003.

Suggestion for replacement: dnsbl.njabl.org sbl.spamhaus.org cbl.abuseat.org
The zonefiles and associated files will be 'zero-sized' on that day. The domains
will continue to resolve for a long time, but they will contain nothing more
than the test records (127.0.0.2 and example.com), so they will not catch
anything.

Holy Crap!
- Yep.

FAQ?
- Sure.

Are you being DDos'ed out of existence?
- Nope. They probably tried. We didn't even notice it.

Are you being sued?
- Nope. They probably tried. We didn't even notice it.

Are you being threatened?
- Frankly, we will miss that part.

Are you tired?
- Damn right.

Are you giving up?
- That is not the right word. There are plenty of fine blacklists, and new ones
spring up every day. The wirehub/easynet lists served their purpose, but others
may serve that purpose equally well.

Isn't this all kinda sudden?
- Yes. Sometimes, you just know that it's time to say goodbye. And the moment
you know it, you must do it. Running blacklists on anything less than 100%
motivation and energy is not how it should be done.

Anything else?
- Sure. These blacklists were maintained by a single person, all of them. Every
day. Listings, delistings, finding new DSL/cable ranges, finding new open
proxies, writing better scripts, handling all email, running statistics,
publishing overviews, providing rsync areas, DNS tranfers. You name it. TINW.
There's an I. And I want my life back, at least a little ;)

Life?
- Yes. Maybe not as we know it. Over the past 3-4 years, the maintainer of these
lists has worked 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day running these lists and
handling all tasks and email associated with them. Not a single day has passed
without at least processing delisting requests (the bare minimum). And then
there was the day job (which was really nothing more than running an ISP's
server farm - peanuts, it's FreeBSD).

Is that all?
- There's more to it, but the details do not really concern you. Let's just say
that the integrity of these lists might have been in jeopardy in the long run.
There are two cardinal sins when it comes to blacklists: 1. putting/keeping
someone on them who should not be - 2. not putting someone on them who really
should be. Avoiding '1' is a matter of discipline and a thick skin. Avoiding '2'
is a matter of being totally independent from all pressures surrounding you.
Avoiding '2' has become increasingly difficult, and we'd rather stop with our
integrity fully intact and our reputation unharmed. That is about now. Well,
next week.

We?
- Yes, dropping that habit will take some time ;)

Will you be back?
- Probably. Lurking.

Will you miss us?
- Depends on how well target practice goes.

Should we give up The Good Fight?
- Hell no, we're winning. There's plenty of enthusiasm, and there are plenty of
new and old blacklists doing fine work. Take your pick. Keep fighting. Fight for
your spam laws. Educate. Annoy. Sue if you must. It's up to you now.

Is there anything we can do?
- Yes. Spread the word, please. Post to your local/national abuse groups, inform
anyone you know who uses these lists, update your configurations. Nothing will
break after Dec 1, but there will come a day when these names (including the old
Wirehub ones, which still resolve) will cease to resolve. This will probably be
announced.

Will the lists be back under a different name?
- Probably not. It started out as 'doing some extra work to stop spam', because
.. well .. FreeBSD and such, plenty of time left. And why not donate that work
to the Internet community as well. In the long run. it turned out to be 'getting
some sleep and maybe something to eat between emails and zone updates'.
Sometimes, enough is just enough.

Can't you just maintain one or two of the lists?
- What did I just say?

I have a question!
- The email address will probably work throughout December. It may drop dead
after that. Hope I won't.

Goodbye all. It was invigorating, it was fun, it was necessary. Don't give up.

Ben.

--
easynet.nl abuse handling dept. -- abuse@abuse.nl.easynet.net
- blacklists/dnsbls: http://abuse.easynet.nl/spamstats.html -
- aup: http://www.nl.easynet.net/pub/av/aup/nl (dutch) ------
- aup: http://www.nl.easynet.net/pub/av/aup/en (english) ----

He's right, it was time for him to quit.  The guy responsible for those blacklists, blacklisted our company 3 or 4 times.  We are a legitimate business and his actions cost us time and money.  We have never used e-mail for any type of advertisement purposes ever.  I can understand mistakenly blacklisting us once, but the times after that were unexcusable.  Each time, it took several days to clear up.  He also took it farther than just blacklisting.  We finally had to threaten legal action, which seemed to do the trick.  It's because of him, we have waited almost two years to try SPAM filtering software.  Our e-mail communications are responsible for a large portion of our revenue.  We did not want to risk blocking legitimate e-mails from our clients and vendors, many of which are small businesses and are on blocks of IPs that are often incorrectly blacklisted.  ISPs are part of the blame, but so are people like the guy who maintained the blackhole blacklists.  Out of all the black list servers, his were the only ones to list our IP.

Konrad

IPs that are often incorrectly blacklisted

that does not excist.

so many reason.... ignorant admins, ignorant abuse desks, ignorant IP handles,

ignorant sysadmins...call your isp, or netblock admin, fix the problem,

and your blacklist is gone within a day.

i called them so often, and always... sorry, yes i should have done that before....

" but the customer is somewhat ignorant... haha"

no problem whatsover with easynet, they were great thanx guys for the past 8 years !

-eric-