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Public blacklists are used on a daily basis by many enterprises in order to curb spam.

Frederic Aoun and Bruno Rasle, co-authors of the book "Halte au Spam", unveiled today their latest study on the subject.

This contribution is divided in two parts.

Part One: Measurement campaign
http://www.halte-au-spam.com/Blacklists_Results.pdf

We watched over seventy top French companies and government agencies and checked whether they were listed by a panel of anti-spam blacklist services. You will discover that:

Over half of entities watched were blacklisted at least once during the period of observation. Not a single day went by without one French entity being indexed. With little surprise, an ISP gets the award of being listed by most blacklists, for the longest period. An important government agency follows closely as it was blacklisted for the entire period. Several industrial big names were found to be blacklisted for not complying with standards. We also witnessed the death of a blacklist!

Part Two: A study on list-based filtering
http://www.halte-au-spam.com/Blacklists_FAQ_en.pdf

Who is behind blacklists? What is their business model? How do you end-up blacklisted? What is the real efficiency of this type of filtering? Can blacklists present "deviant" uses? Are they useful?

The study also features:

* An exclusive interview with Steve Linford, creator of Spamhaus, one of the most well known blacklists,

* Advice in order to use blacklists to fight spam,

* What should you do, in the unhappy event you find yourself blacklisted?

By Frederic Aoun, Consultant

Related topics: Spam