sourcefrog : The short story on Spews

The short story on Spews

Spews is a blacklist of IPs that can be used to filter spam. Most spam filtering solutions abide by the principle of "first, do no harm", but Spews does not.

In fact, just the opposite: the Spews administrators consider it a positive good to block as much non-spam email as possible from customers of ISPs that the anonymous Spews maintainers dislike. Essentially it is a boycott of ISPs that Spews consider to be soft on spam. The definition of who will be listed is pretty vague and elastic, and sometimes sites are added in error. I support their right to publish their opinion, even though I think it's silly.

So the short story on Spews is this: if you want to block legitimate email so as to participate in a boycott, use Spews. If you want to discard mail addressed to you from friends, family and colleagues, use Spews. If you don't, don't.

Martin Pool's blog

The short story on Spews