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SORBS Closure Imminent

22 June 2009

SORBS wasn’t best DNSBL in the world. For instance, they listed all of one ESP’s net space because the maintainer had personal issues with the contact point at the ESP. As I recall, on their explanation of those blocks, they said that they were listing the space and that the contact point “is not an appropriate contact person.” So, in other words, this was not the most professionally run of blocking lists.

However, it was fairly widely used and you kind of needed to watch it if you send commercial email. The following email was sent to SPAM-L announcing the imminent demise of SORBS:

All,

Please feel free to forward this message to any other location/mailing list.

It comes with great sadness that I have to announce the imminent closure of SORBS. The University of Queensland have decided not to honor their agreement with myself and SORBS and terminate the hosting contract.

I have been involved with institutions such as Griffith University trying to arrange alternative hosting for SORBS, but as of 12 noon, 22nd June 2009 no hosting has been acquired and therefore I have been forced in to this announcement. SORBS is officially “For Sale” should anyone wish to purchase it as a going concern, but failing that and failing to find alternative hosting for a 42RU rack in the Brisbane area of Queensland Australia SORBS will be shutting down permanently in 28 days, on 20th July 2009 at 12 noon.

This announcement will be replicated on the main SORBS website at the earliest opportunity.

For information about the possible purchase of SORBS, the source code, data, hosts etc, I maybe contacted at [contact info redacted].

For any hosting suggestions/provision, please be aware that the 42RU space is a requirement at the moment, and the service cannot be made into a smaller rackspace without a lot of new hardware, virtual hosting is just not possible. The SORBS service services over 30 billion DNS queries per day, and has a number of database servers with fast disk to cope with the requirements.

Thank you for all your support over the years,

Michelle Sullivan
(Previously known as Matthew Sullivan)

[UPDATE: The announcement is also found on the SORBS website.
H/T DSNBL Resource]
Mickey Chandler
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