Spamhaus blocking queries from Digital Ocean Cloud servers


As part of their continuing efforts to lock down unrestricted public access to their reputation data, Spamhaus has announced that as of February 14, 2024, they'll be blocking DNSBL queries made via Digital Ocean's Cloud Server infrastructure. Read more about it here.

This isn't really a bad thing; those who want can still sign up for the free tier of "DQS" access from Spamhaus for small volume or hobbyist usage. Requiring registration for this (and using their unique subdomain-based process) reminds me a bit of email authentication -- the goal is so that Spamhaus can see you as you, not as just some random bits of data in the blob of all the requests coming from public servers.

I've blogged about this before. So if you're wondering how to safely query Spamhaus reputation data, read this and be informed.

Email admins asleep at the wheel tend to wake up weeks later and assume that Spamhaus is blocking all of Gmail or something, when in fact DNSBL query responses do actually indicate that "use of public DNS infrastructure" is actually the reason for the issue (and referenced in the response code being received back). Don't be that person!

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