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Ask Al: Senderbase.org?


A reader wrote in with the following question/complaint about Senderbase.org. I'm going to post this one anonymously. The reader wrote, "I would like to request a review of senderbase.org. I would like to know if I am the only one that has communication problems with them. Their delisting instructions are basically non-existent, and my last attempts to communicate with them have takes upwards of two weeks to even get a response. I believe the listings last an incredibly long time and that their communication and delisting process is extremely poor. I would like to know what your opinion of them as a reputable RBL would be. Perhaps it is just me with the problem."

Senderbase.org is an Ironport/Cisco reputation system, and my understanding is that it's used by various Ironport spam filters all around the world. I'm not specifically aware of anybody having any problems with it. I, personally, haven't experienced any issues with listings -- I don't even know that I've ever had a client with significant issues traced back to a reputation issue as measured by them. So, by default, I start from the premise that if Senderbase.org says you have a bad reputation, maybe the issue is that you have a bad reputation. Since it's not really an RBL (DNSBL)-style service, and I haven't publicly published stats on blacklist accuracies in over two years, I'm not really in a position to "write a review" about them. But, what I will do, is post this note here, and invite other folks to share their experiences here, in comments. If you would prefer not to comment publicly, feel free to contact me here. If there's enough interest, I pull together information from various reader responses and post a followup.

6 Comments

Comments policy: Al is always right. Kidding, mostly. Be polite, please and thank you.

  1. My only issue with Senderbase.org is if a couple of IPs have issues with a poor reputation in the same net block they can/will list them all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm. I've almost always found senderbase.org to be an *extremely* accurate way of getting overall idea of the "hat color" of a mail source.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought delisting would not even be applicable to something like senderbase.

    Can't help but wonder if its possible that the anonymous reader had an issue with senderscore.org which afaik is connected with both a blocklist and two whitelists?

    Side note:
    Any chance of you doing a review on the senderscore safe and certified whitelists, and reputation blocklist?

    ReplyDelete
  3. SenderBase.org's listings are fairly accurate, in my opinion. I've seen soft bounces based on a poor senderbase.org reputation from cisco-based mail filter products.

    SenderBase.org's support, while it typically takes 2 weeks for an initial reply for me too, has at least never not solved a problem of mine within 48 hours of that initial reply.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have just been put on Senderbase.org's poor list (and now moved to neutral). Their documentation tells me nothing of how I got on their poor list nor how to get off of it. We are not on ANY blacklist. So what can I do to get off of their $h1t list?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Same exact issue as Anonymous above... we are on their sh!t list for our domain name (not the ip??) but absolutely clean on every other list. Every single other reputation site gives us a perfect score. Our web site is as plain jane as you can get- straight HTML and nothing else. No information as to how to rectify the problem... I expect Cisco to be hit w/ some big lawsuits over this one if it continues. Very disappointed.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It is YEARS out of date. IPs on this black list used by spammers in the nineties and are still listed there.

    Because its Cisco, there is no contact and the whole system is essentially abandoned. use a real list instead.

    ReplyDelete
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