jeffc at surbl
Nov 10, 2008, 4:45 AM
Post #1 of 25
(1910 views)
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SURBL Usage Policy change
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Wanted to give a heads up the SURBL is starting to ask the
largest rsync users of its data for sponsorship fees to help
subsidize the small to medium sized organizations using it, and
to help keep SUBRL running, to do more research into improving
the data, etc.
Please note that free public DNS queries for organizations smaller
than 1,000 users or processing fewer than 250,000 messages per
day is unchanged. We hope this matches the spirit of the open
source community at least somewhat.
Cheers,
Jeff C.
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 09:17:33 -0800
To: "SURBL Announce" <announce [at] lists>,
From: "SURBL Announcement list \[READONLY\]" <announce [at] lists>
Subject: [SURBL-Announce] SURBL Usage Policy change
Dear member of the SURBL community:
As a valued member of the SURBL community, we are contacting you to
provide an update on changes that SURBL has made to its licensing and
usage policies. SURBL is dedicated to helping the community detect
unsolicited messages, and trusts the service is working effectively for
your organization.
The primary objective of the SURBL team is to ensure that SURBL remains
effective, of the highest quality, and sustainable over the long term.
The goal is to provide a tool that remains available and effective for
the Internet community to control the spiraling growth of unsolicited
messages, particularly those sent using botnets. As such, SURBL is
following a model that has proven successful in gaining the support of
subscribers from its user community. The new licensing policy requires
that organizations exceeding 1,000 email users or 250,000 messages per
day are required to register and sign up for the Sponsored Data Service
(SDS). The funding will be used to enable SURBL to continue as a
sustainable organization, and to enhance the effectiveness and
capabilities of its service. The funding is, by design, very moderate
and will provide much needed support to sustain this initiative.
We are providing you this notice to ensure you are aware of the policy
changes, and can help your organization to make a proactive decision.
The needs of the SURBL user community have always been foremost in our
planning. Some of the benefits to subscribers include direct access to
technical support, the ability to whitelist web sites, and increased
rsync updating frequencies. In addition, the whole SURBL community will
benefit from expanded research to further improve the speed,
completeness and accuracy of the list data. SURBL's vision is to
continue to enhance the functionality, quality, and overall
effectiveness for the entire user community.
As valued members of the SURBL community, we appreciate your support,
and ask for your help in this new licensing model.
SURBL has partnered with MXTools which will provide dedicated customer
service and technical support. MXTools provides a similar role
for Spamhaus, providing sales and support of the Spamhaus
Datafeed Service.
Please contact support [at] mxtools to provide feedback and to indicate
your level of interest in the continued use of SURBL. Pricing
information can be found at: http://www.surbl.org/datafeed/
SURBL would also like to take this opportunity to announce that
SURBL is now a project of Site Data Corporation, a Seychelles
corporation. No listing policies will change as a result of any
of these changes, however the additional resources should enable
improvements to the completeness and coverage of SURBL data.
Sincerely,
Jeff Chan
William Stearns
Joe Wein
Raymond Dijkxhoorn
Andy Warner
SURBL
http://www.surbl.org/
Arnie Bjorklund
MXTools
http://www.mxtools.com/
1-866-931-9228
Reference Information:
SURBL usage policy: http://www.surbl.org/usage-policy.html
MXTools - Authorized SURBL Representatives: http://www.surbl.org/datafeed/
SURBL Usage Policy
SURBL data are updated more than 240 times daily and are provided to
users worldwide via public DNS servers or via a data feed service. The
former (DNS query) is completely free and subject to certain usage
restrictions, while the latter (Data Feed) is a paid service. The
revenue generated by the paid service ensures that SURBL can continue to
reliably provide the information that hundreds of millions of users
depend upon to keep their mailboxes and computers safe from messages
that are unsolicited, phishing, or malware.
Free Use:
For individual users, small charitable or non-profit organizations,
small businesses or any other organizations that have fewer than 1,000
users or that scan fewer than 250,000 messages per day in total, the
SURBL Free Query Service (FQS) is completely free and can be accessed
via a worldwide network of servers. This network of servers is
geographically diverse to ensure a very high level of responsiveness and
reliability.
Sponsored Use:
Any organization, including software developers, ISPs, or large
organizations that provide email filtering (either as hardware, software
or services, individually or as a combined offering) of 1,000 or more
users SHOULD NOT be using the SURBL FQS. Instead they need to sign up
for the Sponsored Data Service (SDS). SDS was developed to meet the
professional needs of organizations and email technology providers who
have a large number of mail messages to scan. As such it is far more
efficient to conduct these scans against a local copy of the SURBL data.
The SDS data are provided using an rsync feed that automatically updates
the content with new additions. The SDS subscription fee includes
unlimited access to our technical support team.
SURBL monitors the use of the FQS to ensure that heavy users are not
abusing FQS, which is reserved for use by small organizations and
individual end users.
________________________________________
SURBL Usage Policy effective 10/1/08
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