Anyways, DSBL doesn’t shut off the third largest source of legitimate mail. DSBL users do. DSBL lists them when they collect hard evidence that they’re spam-friendly, and they have every right to treat every service equally. This doesn’t make them dogmatic, it makes them fair. They give their users the hard facts, and it’s up to the users to decide to put in an “allow” rule specifically for Gmail, unless they want to accept all the other spam junk that DSBL’s lists block. Personally, I appreciate this fairness. My mail server’s been repeatedly scanned for open relays and it’s locked down tight — and my reward is not getting publicly shamed by being added to open relay block lists.

There’s no reason Gmail should be treated any differently. Again, it’s up to DSBL users to decide how to resolve the situation if Google refuses to fix the problem…but it has nothing to do with dogma, and it has nothing to do with any sort of a DSBL problem.

If you think Gmail should not be held accountable and be given a pass just because it’s a very large (users and volume) mail service, then perhaps you think Microsoft should not be held accountable for security holes in Windows just because it’s the most widely-used operating system.

I certainly want the problem solved in the long term, and I’ll go ahead and bitch to gmail, but in the meantime, anyone who wants mail from the tens of millions of gmail users should turn off DSBL, and they should consider ditching any service which is so dogmatic about open relays that they are willing to shut off the third largest source of legitimate email.

I’m sorry my sarcasm about who would see the consequences of Gmail’s actions was lost on you.

As to (1), I have seen nothing from Gmail where they claim that they are blocking spammers. Conversely I have seen evidence that they admit they are an open relay to DSBL administrators.

As far as (2), I fail to see why that makes a difference. My mail server could have twenty million users. If it’s an open relay, it’s still an open relay. Having more users doesn’t make me more or less “right” about having one. It just means that people using those blocklists will then have a harder decision when deciding whether to allow all the other spam-dumping servers to talk to them as well just to let Gmail in, or whether to keep Gmail out to keep the other spam out.

Anyways, you’ve totally missed my original point, which was, why not bitch at Gmail to fix their problem instead of DSBL? You can react the same way regardless, by not using DSBL’s blocklists, or adding a Gmail exception, if you can find a server list. But if you want the problem to be solved permanently, at least go to (and blame) the cause of it, not the effect.

As far as your assumptions about who is being hurt… I found out about this because someone using DSBL asked me for information and didn’t get it. In this particular case, no skin off my back; big skin off his. He is the one who was hurt, not me. But I’m sure this is the first time anyone who uses DSBL has ever asked for information from a gmail user, so maybe you’re right.

You could say that it doesn’t hurt DSBL’s users at all. After all, they never see the consequences of Gmail’s actions. It’s Gmail users whose mail get bounced back that experience these failures.

DSBL isn’t refusing to cope with reality. They’re facing the reality that Gmail is an open relay, and they’re treating it like every other open relay. That’s their job, and they’re simply refusing to treat Gmail different than other providers. If Hotmail was an open relay, everyone would bitch at Microsoft to fix the problem, not DSBL…why is Google being treated differently?

http://dsbl.org/message?37724616

Note the following lines:
MAIL FROM:
RCPT TO:

and in the email headers:
Return-Path:

Simply by fudging the return path they were able to have the Gmail server relay a message from one address to another, with neither being a Gmail address.

This is Gmail’s problem, and your efforts would be better spent complaining to Gmail to fix their actual problem instead of DSBL to fix a nonexistent problem.

You have an uphill battle, as, spitting in the face of every best practice email system admins have, Gmail is concerned only with accounts that “do” send spam, not with accounts that “could” send spam. See their unbelievably ignorant message here:

http://dsbl.org/email?9457

PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [66.249.92.171] blocked using dnsbl.sorbs.net; Spam Received Recently See: http://www.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml?66.249.92.171