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Anonymous Postmaster Early Warning System

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Anfi (talk | contribs) at 22:46, 8 August 2007 (Discussion section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Anonymous Postmaster Early Warning System (APEWS) is an anonymous service that maintains a list of IP address ranges (L2 list) and domain names (L1 list) belonging to internet service providers (ISPs) that the anonymous maintainers claim to be hosting spammers and failing to prevent their abuse of other networks' resources.

According to the only public forum communication ever released by APEWS, the service was founded by people who observed that the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) was inactive, no longer maintained, and possibly dead. Unlike SPEWS, APEWS operates two blacklists: a Right-Hand Side Blacklist (RHSBL) that lists domains as well as a Domain Name System Blacklist (DNSBL) that lists IP address ranges.[1]

Discussion

There is an ongoing discussion of the validity and utility of the APEWS list. The widely-used resource at DNSStuff.com[2] recommends against using the APEWS list. APEWS lists at present approximately 40 percent of routable IPV4 address space, including, for instance, 12.0.0.0/9, rendering it useless in a production environment. The maintainers provide links to two popular USENET newsgroups in lieu of an actual removal queue, and this has given rise to displeasure among users of those newsgroups. This and APEWS's lack of any coherent policy governing listings militate against its being taken seriously by the anti-spam community.

Since the APEWS list is not known to be used anywhere in the world in an actual production environment, it is not known how email users are being made aware of listings. To date, there is not a single verified instance of email being rejected as a result of a listing in APEWS. The consensus among anti-spam authorities is that email users can safely disregard a listing in APEWS, since any routed IP address is likely to be listed there, and that persons who are listed should not follow the advice on APEWS's website to post to USENET groups, since this will only result in disinformation and FUD.

References

  1. ^ APEWS first and only announcement of existence (2007-01-12).
  2. ^ Example of APEWS listing with DNSStuff recommendation against its use
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