Talk:The Spamhaus Project/Archives/2013

Removed unsupported allegation:

 * Spamhaus uses a suprising discretion and is thought to perhaps accept payment for removal, for example the notorious and self-proclaimed "SPAMKING", Scott Richter, mysteriously disapeared from their listings eariler this year without any change in practice.

There's nothing mysterious. I've never heard anyone provide any credible evidence for such an allegation. It's all thoroughly explained on n.a.n-a.e., the first place where one would look for such an explanation. E.g. read Linford's and respondant posts in [the relevant thread.

False allegation by User:70.5.183.71
Spamhaus does however "suggest" that anyone wanting removal from their database purchase their overpriced feeds and software.


 * The above unsigned statement was left by User:70.5.183.71. It is simply false. Spamhaus publishes clear criteria for their DNSBLs, which do not in any part involve buying anything from Spamhaus. You can see the SBL listing criteria here and the XBL criteria here. (Note that XBL is simply a composite of three DNSBLs maintained by third parties, so its policy is a reference to those other lists' policies.)


 * Moreover, Spamhaus doesn't even sell software. They do sell a service for ISPs, which is simply a local mirror of the freely-available DNSBLs. This is a convenience for ISPs who want to use Spamhaus's lists on high-volume mail servers -- it increases throughput and ensures that the lists are always available to the ISP's mail servers. It is of no benefit to anyone who doesn't already approve of Spamhaus's policies, since its only purpose is to speed up access to the DNSBLs. --FOo 05:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

POV removed from article
I removed this from the article:

Spamhause is believed by some to be a corrupt company that exploits legitimate emailers to get off of their list.

Any verifible credibility to this? TimBentley (talk) 21:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Downside
I just added a note that innocent users are sometimes tagged as spammers because their ISP got on the list. This happened to two people I know; their only fix was to change ISPs. Any stats on "innocent victims" would be useful. If these stats exist (which I think would probably only be measurable by volume of complaints to The Spamhaus Project), then stats or anecdotes might also exist on what ISPs have had customer losses / gone out of business because they were spammers. Tempshill 18:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Response by Spamhaus
As one of the Spamhaus team I can give you approximate stats on the complaints we get. Each week we get approx 5 complaints from users due to PBL listings, always from users who have forgotten to turn on 'SMTP Authentication'. Once we point them to assistance on how to turn on 'SMTP Authentication' in Outlook or (wherever they're using) those complaints are resolved. Further each week we get approx another 5 complaints from users due to XBL listings. We point them to the (usually CBL) page where they can quickly resolve the listing (usually by removing the virus/trojan from their PCs). Lastly we get approx 3 to 4 complaints per week due to SBL listings. These are handled by a 24/7 response team and usually resolved fast (unless the complainer is actually a spammer).

Combining Spamhaus's complaint numbers thus totals approx 14 complaints per week. One should weigh this against the task Spamhaus does: we block in excess of 80 billion spams per day, which means 560 billion spams per week. i.e: 560,000,000,000 spams blocked versus 14 complaints. (Spamhaus obviously doesn't take the complaints from spammers "You nazis blocked all mah viagra spams!" into account). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.187.82.121 (talk) 13:02, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Rebutting deleted accusations
I just reverted the addition of some hostile anti-Spamhaus advocacy text. However, I think some of it represents a mistake that deserves rebuttal here:


 * Furthemore Spamhouse disregards internet standards, even though it tells others to follow them. For example it says on its FAQ page that server owners should have abuse and postmaster email accounts set up on their server and that to "read postmaster@ and abuse@ mailboxes every day, and act on reports!" Yet it does not have a postmaster address, and its abuse address is an autoresponse that says the email will not be read. It also suggests to "register all domains with http://www.abuse.net" yet has not registered its own.

The standards and recommendations in question deal with sites that host email accounts, and are therefore in need of communication with other email postmasters. The standards are there to promote communication with sites that could potentially be emitting abusive email. A site that does not have email users, and does not send outbound email, simply does not have a need for a postmaster address.

In any event, these recommendations are for email-sending sites that want to ensure that if their users send abusive email, that others can get in touch with them. They are not some kind of law or dogma. Accusing Spamhaus of being evil for not following them mindlessly is a serious logical fallacy. --FOo 23:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

-- Rebuttal -- Spamhaus does have email users -- some email addresses are listed here: http://www.spamhaus.org/contacts.html. While indeed postmaster and abuse addresses are not law, they are advisable and advised by Spamhaus itself. And Spamhaus can blacklist any site, and thus site owners need to know that in this context Spamhaus advises users do one thing, yet does something else. This is relevant to people that need to interact with Spamhaus on two levels: one is that they should adhere to standards because Spamhaus says this is relevant, but on the other they may not be able to contact Spamhaus. At one point in time the contact address on their website -- project-admin@spamhaus.org -- was bouncing. This is a time to contact postmaster, to quote Wikipedia's page on the issue, "where errors in e-mail processing are directed". Spamhaus did not adhere to the postmaster standard, and thus an error in contacting them via email could not be corrected. This is extremely relevant to those that need to contact an organisation that could blacklist them, and provides interesting context on them as a whole. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.113.30.58 (talk) 12:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Anti-Advertising slant?
An anecdote from a friend whose IP block is on the SBL (thanks to its previous user being a spammer). Said friend runs an internet advertising business (e.g. Google AdWords or Yahoo's Search Marketing). When making his request to have his IP block taken out of the SBL, the response was basically, "well, we hate you advertisers too, so have your ISP deal with us". Anyone else have similar or contrasting stories with Spamhaus and their interaction with advertisers? Tmurase 21:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Please give us something more than an anecdote. At the very least, a link to the site in question would help establish some context. I wouldn't want to remove their IP either, if they were hosting an Adsense Farm or polluting the web in some other way. 129.8.49.84 21:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent Court Case
I personally don't have the time, but the article ought to include something about the recent (invalid?) court ruling against Spamhaus. Information can be obtained here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7757.html and here: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34415 and here: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39283356,00.htm


 * The ruling against Spamhaus was a simple default judgment because Spamhaus did not appear or fight the claim. In the United States under civil rules (NOT criminal) you must prove your “innocence” and you must fight the claim against you; if you do not then a default judgment is automatic irregardless of the validity claim of the plaintiff.


 * With that said, the court lacks In personam jurisdiction (Personal jurisdiction) over the defendant, it also lacks subject matter jurisdiction rendering the court order null and void. It is little more then symbolic. As such it can not even be used for the setting of any precedence. Bdelisle 23:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It basically isn't very important. The lawsuit is being hyped (including in email and Usenet spam!) by the spammer, but it doesn't have any effect on the operation of Spamhaus. --FOo 04:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Anti Spamhaus Spam (Class Action Lawsuit)
I just saw this spam below, anyone know anything about it? -Shogun 23:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello I am writing you today to ask that you get involved in a Class Action Lawsuit to stop the abuse and blackmail perpetrated by a vigilante organization known as Spamhaus and run by Steve Linford. We have talked to many ISPs and hosting companies and the consensus is basically the same. ISPs are tired of being blackmailed and bullied by this group of thugs and we propose to put an end to it by filing a Lawsuit. The defendants in this lawsuit will be

1. Spamhaus.org

2. Steve Linford

3. Companies that use and support Spamhaus.

4. ISPs that unjustly shut or refuse service based on Spamhaus direction.

As you may already know Spamhaus just lost an 11.7 million dollar lawsuit filed by e360insight.com. they have refused to abide by the federal court order and will be soon held in contempt. If you are using Spamhaus you may be exposing your company to huge liability as they do not follow any law in their blacklisting and Steve Linford uses his position to abuse his list as a weapon for personal vendettas.

Facts: 1. Spamhaus lists sites, IPs and ISPs that are not spamming.

2. Steve Linford uses his blacklists to enrich himself and for personal vendettas

3. Steve Linford owns a hosting company UXN.COM which is a direct conflict of interest in operating his illegal blacklist

4. Steve Linford Ignores United States courts and laws

5. Steve Linford Blackmails ISPs by listing IPs of innocents in order to get them to comply with whatever he asks.

6. The same list Spamhaus misrepresents as their SBl is freely available at http://cbl.abuseat.org (without the blackmail)

7. Steve Linford has no regard for free speech and puts sites on his list solely for speaking out about him to repress the growing Anti-spamhaus movement.

One only needs to log into http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email to see the absolute nonsense that goes on there and Steve Linford banging his chest and bragging he can shut down any site or host in the world. Regardless of the fight against spam there is no place on the internet for one man to decide who has a website and who does not.

If you are Interested in more information and updates as we progress please send an email to wss78758@yahoo.com and we will add you to our confidential list. At the very least if your tired of this kind of blackmail, do not bow to the Illegal actions of Spamhaus and log into http://groups.google.com/group/news.admin.net-abuse.email and tell them what you think of their blackmail tactics. It is time for Spamhaus to go. if you google "Spamhaus Terrorists" and "Spamhaus Judgment" you can read more about what is going on recently.

Thank you for your time Committee to stop Spamhaus censorship and Blackmail

This, and the other spam attacking spamhaus from a couple of weeks ago, are both discussed on things like spam-l and nanae. I don't think it is appropriate to turn the wiki discussion page into a forum, so I won't discuss it further here. Wrs1864 01:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Current Event?
Should this article really be labled as a current event? The lawsuit is current and the project is currently active but it does not seam to be a current even in itself. what do you think? zorkerz 05:17, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
 * If you read [news:news.admin.net-abuse.email news.admin.net-abuse.email], you'll see that new events regarding the lawsuit are being posted almost every day. Therefore, the information in this article could rapidly become out of date. —Psychonaut 14:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Corruption allegations
I have seen that a few unsourced corruption allegations have been removed here, however I recently found http://www.paulgraham.com/spamhausblacklist.html at Paul Graham's site. The article says nothing about corruption or anything similar. I think that we need to at least mention the fact that many people consider Spamhaus to be corrupt. What do others think?ConditionalZenith 04:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That page likens blacklists of mailservers to terrorism. In his article Filters that Fight Back, Paul Graham advocates the use of filters that could bring down the webservers and proxyservers of Internet-based wikis and blogs whose links happen to be in spam, whether or not that was the intent of the spammers or the people operating the filters.  By his own definition, that's terrorism.  So we shouldn't trust what he writes because he is a terrorist.  And many people describe him as an idiot on Usenet and on the World Wide Web. -- Jeff G. 05:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Your linked article clearly suggest using blacklists to try and avoid harming innocent servers (though I do find this curious given that his other article describes the corruption of blacklists). I don't see how you can say that article advocates terrorism.  You then use your unjustified conclusion that he is a terrorist to conclude that what he says can't be trusted.  And following your google links does not show the torrent of people calling him an idiot like I expected.  And his WP article doesn't seem to unequivocally condemn him either.  It is no surprise to see someone in his position has some detractors, that doesn't make his opinion invalid.


 * Other people consider Spamhaus corrupt too (and yes, you can dig up dirt on them too). In fact  seems to turn up more positive results than your Paul Graham idiot searches do.  Anyway, we are not here to discuss whether Spamhaus is corrupt, just whether to state in the article that some people say it is.ConditionalZenith 22:20, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I, for one, would like to see more documentation of Paul Graham's accusations, for instance full unredacted headers and bodies of the emails quoted at Another SBL Story and SBL Going Bad?. Otherwise, it's just uncorroborated original research. -- Jeff G. 02:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, not just original research, it's defamation and unverifiable, too, and including it in the article could result in the article's listing by Articles_for_deletion. -- Jeff G. 03:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not proposing that we state it as fact, just that we say that some people think this. We don't need to prove opinions, just state them (with references to people holding the opinion) where enough people have them.


 * I think you are somewhat misunderstanding WP:OR, it refers to us including our original research in WP, not to including other people's original research (called primary sources in WP:OR). And I highly doubt that the page would be listed for deletion, we usually try to fix articles rather than delete them.ConditionalZenith 06:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As ConditionalZenith mentions, adding a link to Paul Graham's accusations would not be original research, as long as we write something like "The noted anti-spam researcher Paul Graham claims ....". It is a verifiable fact that he wrote the critisism. If we put Paul's rant into this article, it would be orignal research and largely unverifiable.
 * A more relevant question is, "is this like a reliable source?". Considering Paul's large financial interest in Yahoo Stores, I'm not so sure.  Also, I seem to recall that Paul has long promoted Bayesian Classification as being much better than DNSBLs, so this link could easily be seen as very biased toward promoting his own systems.  (Yes, Paul's systems are non-commercial, but that doesn't make the source any more reliable.  I also seem to recall it was Paul who gave a talk to one of the MIT anti-spam conferences about how easily Bayesian Classifiers can be defeated by using "pico spam" that has almost no words, but delivers the spam via an image.  Paul isn't an idiot, but that doesn't mean he isn't biased or that this qualifies as a reliable source.) Wrs1864 13:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I have added a link to the generic DNSBL criticisms section. Personally, I see Paul's critism to be a classic case of "I am using an ISP that was either cutting corners by not making sure that customers aren't spammers, are too clueless to tell, or too corrupt to care, resulting in everyone on the Internet being hurt by spam. This caused my ISP to be listed on a DNSBL and now *I* am being hurt.  *I* shouldn't be hurt just because *I* choose to use a bad ISP."  If I recall correctly, when Paul Graham's complaint came out, it was quickly documented that Yahoo Stores was indeed a haven for spammers and that Yahoo had been repeatedly warned but failed to act.  As a result, the SBL listing was well within Spamhaus's listing criteria.  As a result of the SBL listing, Yahoo acted and cleaned things up, resulting in the SBL listing going away.  As this is really an example of the generic complaint against most DNSBLs, I think that the critism would be better, and more appropriate, on the DNSBL page. Wrs1864 13:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * While there are other complaints against Spamhaus, they all seem to be by people that are blacklisted, and I also did have questions about the reliability of the source (I didn't expect to have the source called an idiot and a terrorist though). I agree that the DNSBL would be a better place for these sort of complaints.  Thanks for your helpful input to the discussion.ConditionalZenith 21:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Wrs1864. -- Jeff G. 02:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Obviously, they are blacklisted. These are the only people that are required to have communication with SpamHaus. That doesn't make the complaints illegitimate. tkeyser

Paul Graham is not really an "anti-spam researcher". He is a computer scientist who briefly applied some of his work to spam filtering, and thereby popularized Bayesian text classification as a spam-filtering method. However, he has never claimed to be an expert on how spammers work -- the quite untheoretical detective work that Spamhaus specializes in: spammers' secret deals with ISPs, their black-market trade in compromised hosts, their use of bogus and stolen netblocks, and so on.

The difference is important. A builder of bank vaults and a police detective both know something about burglary: the purpose of a bank vault is to prevent burglary, after all, just as the purpose of a spam filter is to prevent spam delivery. However, the bank-vault builder doesn't have to know anything about the underground economy in which burglars operate: fences, gangs, shady pawn shops, mobsters, and so on.

Asking Paul Graham to comment on the operations of Spamhaus is like asking a bank-vault engineer to comment on how the police department investigates burglaries. He's certain to have an opinion, but not necessarily an expert opinion as is being credited here. Paul Graham is an expert in the matter of using text-classifiers to filter spam; this does not make him a reliable source on the kind of investigations that Spamhaus does. --FOo 04:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

reversion without reason
In revision 102492029, JeffGent reverted a couple of revisions without giving a reason. If they were obvious incidents of vandalism (which they aren't) then I could understand.

Could you please explain what your reasoning is for reverting a few edits. I will concede that the bottom paragraph was unsourced, however the changes to the main paragraph were good edits IMHO. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ConditionalZenith (talk • contribs) 01:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC).
 * I reverted 'company, e360Insight LLC, and its President, David Linhardt' to 'spammer named David Linhardt, operating as "e360 Insight LLC"' because the appellation 'spammer' appeared to be justified by the approx. 54 current sightings of their address in spam as found at Google Groups and the evidence formerly in the ROKSO records. Sorry, popups doesn't provide reasons for its reverts by default. -- Jeff G. (talk&#124;contribs&#124;links&#124;watch&#124;logs) 18:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation.ConditionalZenith 02:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Reverted back to 108376088 as added edits by user Linhardt, "changes from spammer to direct marketer" were unsupported for above reasons. Polymorp 00:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks!  — Jeff G. (talk&#124;contribs) 01:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Reverted uncommented edit 125307654 by User:64.81.152.34 Erik Warmelink 00:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Spamhaus versus nic.at
Do we need this section in the aricle? I've tried to clear the section up a bit and removed/reorder parts with seem to be contradictory. http://www.spamhaus.org/organization/statement.lasso?ref=7 is spamhaus take on it and I think if the section is to stay any statement need to be backup with accurate information. Was the SBL /24 or /32 when introduced? Has the reputation of Spamhaus has been damaged or is that just POV? -- Polymorp 02:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I do think, that the conflict has to be reflected, as many admins blindly trust in the services of the project. But possibly a few words and a link are enough. Well, the damage of reputation is hard to measure and possibly it is to early for an interpretation. At least in Austria it is noticeable.


 * Sounds like your personal opinion to me. Can you point to any reliable sources, such as mainstream news or scholarship? Opinion essays and editorials need not apply. --FOo 20:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2932402
 * http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2926368
 * http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2926626
 * http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/91642
 * http://futurezone.orf.at/it/stories/201924/
 * Articles are only available in German, I tried to find some coverage in English, but found nothing. So Spamhaus' reputation is only damaged where people read Austrian news/German IT news. --129.187.47.6 15:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * to:129.187.47.6


 * If you can speak/write German, perhaps you could translate a relevant article that supports your assertions about the "damage...in Austria."??


 * Without a source accessible to all, I don't see how it can be legitimately included in the section on the nic.at controversy.


 * PainMan 00:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of the question about impact, I see a general problem with the quality of this section: Most statements are either not backed up by sources (e.g. that nic.at was a registrar in those cases) or sources are used that I don't think qualify as reliable (Link to a spamhouse press release/blog post itself as primary source? Really?). In addition, loaded language (e.g. "anti-Spamhaus article") and factual errors (e.g. about employee status, when even linked source says otherwise) don't help either. I don't have any experience in WP editing and since this is a sensitive topic, I wanted to put this up to debate here before starting to change the article. 85.127.218.84 (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Minor rewrite; fleshed out judicial ruling
I made no substantial changes to this article.

I only rewrote the section on the "e360" lawsuit so that it flows better.

I also fleshed out the ruling by Federal Judge Kocoras so that it showed that he ruled that he had no authority over ICANN (tho' I'm not at lawyer, I do believe that if Kocoras' denial of motion withstands appeal it will insulate ICANN from interference by US state courts--given that the Federal government, under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, has final authority--thru Congress--over national and international trade issues such as this dispute between Spamhaus and e360.

If the decision becomes precedent, then the doctrine of judicial restraint (i.e. that courts should not interfere in what is properly the domain of one of the other branches of government) will prevail in any future Federal cases involving ICANN.

But it would not, I believe, shield ICANN from a sexual harrassment suit nor a racial discrimination suit; or any other, similar, suit tortious actions. As US corporation it is definitely subject to those laws.

I frankly think that Spamhaus should have made a motion for dismissal based on the court's lack of jurisdiction. Since Spamhaus has no corporate presence within under US sovereignty, and no assests within the same, the case probably would have been kicked in their favor.

It was definitely an error to force the court to issue a default judgment. Because of their refusal to respond, Judge Kocoras had no choice: it's black letter US law. If you're sued and fail to defend, you lose automatically, regardless of the merits.

As for concerns about potential criminal liability, especially against Spamhaus officers, I can't imagine a US court issuing such a citation nor, if issued, that a British "Red Judge" (the rough equivalent of US Federal District Judges) would approve an extradition (let alone there bing any chance a Home Secretary approving it!).

PainMan 23:42, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Mammoth footnotes
I question the necessity for mammoth footnotes/in-text citations. The primary example of this is Note #14 which must be eight inches long.

That's just too much. Sure more succint sourcing and footnoting is preferable!

Not too mention that so many material makes editing extremely difficult. Maybe it's just that I have a mild case of dyslexia, I don't know. I doubt it. It's just too hard to follow the wikipedia text through the maze of websites and citations!

PainMan 23:58, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality warning
Sorry, I put a neutrality warning on this article. It is just too positive. I had problems with Spamhouse and they do not only block Spammers and Hosting companies that support spammers but also block email of people whose hosting company has been the victim of a spammer/criminal act. While this could be understandable, Spamhouse has a totally irrational and abusive bevaviour to remove people from the blacklist. I think the blackmailing of the Austrian NIC is the best examble what kind of company this is. The Austrain NIC hat nothing to do with spamming, phising or even hosting. Spamhaus did not understand the difference between a provider/hosting company and the registry and probably still does not. To force the NIC to delete/suspend domains would put the whole internet at risk and opens the door to all kind of other requests (political, religious etc.) to have domains blocked/removed. China will love the spamhaus approach. To make thinks worse this company operates not unsimilar from spammers. A spammer tries not to be touchable. Where is this company (Spamhaus) located? The US Nic says in Guneva, the internet says it is incoperated in England. What is the mailig address? Where are the offices? The fouder supposely lives in the US. This is an operational style that is not very different from criminal spammers. Spam is an annoying problem. To counteract it with abusive, arrogat and criminal (blackmailing) behaviour can't be the answer. I inserted a neutrality warning but did not change the article sind I am not a native speaker. It should be laid out in the entry that Spamhaus is at least a company with dubious practices and VERY questionable approaches. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.229.34.10 (talk) 12:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

"Neutrality warning" aka spammer propaganda attempt removed
I've removed the neutrality tag inserted by the anonymous writer above. If he wants to dispute the neutrality of the article, particularly given the long history of spammer attempts to bias it with fact-free POV discussed in the other entries on this discussion page, he should:

A) Actually provide a detailed, factual basis, with citations which can be checked, for each of his claims.

B) Take credit for what he writes: log in and sign his work.

C) Perhaps (if he can bring himself to expend the immense effort) have a stab at speelng and, grammer.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tls (talk • contribs) 22:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Spamhaus problems
Spamhaus are a problem, folks, there's no getting away from it. This article is entirely too positive about them. Any organization with power to harm third parties, where those third parties have no recourse, will be incented to abuse that position. And I'm no spammer nor am I connected to any known spammer (I have a fairly large Google footprint you can search for), so paranoid attempts to discredit me are just that, paranoid. It's simply a fact of human nature. Barry Kelly (talk) 21:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Any organization that provides free services that many people want will be treated positively. If you don't like them, you can write about the iffy cases here and on wikinews.  If they're smart, they'll compromise on issues that generate bad publicity, if not maybe their compeditors will trump them one day.  Also, their being subject to U.K. libel laws considerably constrains the harm they can do.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.12.184 (talk) 16:32, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Controversial section removed by Spamhaus employee
On November 30th I edited the main Spamhaus page and added a reference to this article (http://linux.andreagozzi.com/content/spamhaus_article.php) that I believe to be good enough for Wikipedia. While somebody might not agree with what the writer says, the evidence is published for everyone to see. I have been in direct contact via email with the author and the quotation I had published on Wikipedia was extracted from one of those emails.

Less than 48h later somebody removed my edit and described the changes with "Removed entry by spammer". The user was anonymous and connecting from 82.94.216.239. The WHOIS data for that same IP address clearly shows descr: Spamhaus Logistics Corp.

Edits to censor "unfriendly" sections of an article by people involved in the matter is forbidden by the Wikipedia standards, therefore I am restoring my addition to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.16.38.179 (talk • contribs)
 * I have put a warning about conflicts of interest on the the IP block that did the revert, but this section should never have been added in the first place for very similar reasons.  Andrea Gozzi appears to be the owner of spamza.com and has a COI writing on the subject.  Even if it was an unrelated person writing up the web page, someone's random web page does not make it either a reliable source nor does it it mean that the "incident" has the WP:WEIGHT to qualify it being included into wikipedia.   I have not investigated your IP address that much, but it does appear to be from Italy, the same country as spamza and not that far away from it. Wrs1864 (talk) 14:48, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that article is quite interesting. SpamZa clearly isn't very nice, they make money from letting people annoy other people, but they are not a spammer in the usual sense. We should reintroduce this article. What as the quote? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.12.184 (talk) 16:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Anyone got more sources on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.12.184 (talk) 16:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Friendly, aren't they ?
Well all I can say, is that as a legitimate business trying to reply to a customer, I find my IP address on their PBL list. From what I gather this is meant to clear after a few hours for dialup dynamic IP's, but I've been trying for days now.

Anyway, in googling, I came across how they engage in 'conversation' with people ...  The Yeti (talk) 16:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You likely have some computers infected by botnet software or have poorly configured mail servers or your ISP reports your addresses as unauthorized to send mail. Spamhaus only blocks for these reasons (plus sending spam).
 * You *can* get blocked by spamcop, google, etc. merely if your customers feel you are spamming them. I know I always mark undesirable mail as spam on google, and forward it to spamcop, so even if I'm your customer but I feel your "replies" are undesirable, then you will eventually be blocked by these services.  But no you'll never be blocked by Spamhaus for normal communications.
 * Well, most companies take great pains separating their various emailing agencies. So if their "spam our customers" department pisses people off, and gets blocked by gmail, their "email the receipt" service isn't effected.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.148.12.184 (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I'm a small company using one computer with Outlook Express, and 1&1 as our email server. And I'm pretty clued up about trojans, bots, etc. Plus the customer came to us for a quote, so I'd hardly be spamming him in trying to reply ! So I'd say your explanations don't hold water. The Yeti (talk) 05:34, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

How to contact a real person at Spamhaus?
I am at a loss.

My wife has a hosting at Rackspace with a simple low volume web shop. A year ago we saw mail sent from the server being rejected by various sites due to use of Zen (or pervious setup at Spamhaus) due to listing in PBL.

I managed to remove the static IP address which has a correct reverse DNS from the PBL.

Two weeks ago it seems that Spamhaus decided that my wife no longer trades and the IP address can be placed back on the PBL. I try to remove the IP address from the list again but the web page form is not working. I look around for an email address to send to and find nothing. I read on their contact page that they are very unhappy about receiving mail and direct you to use the mail on the unlisting page (this page does not have any contact address) and the button to move to a page that might have a form or address is not working.

I read some more, seems that IP addresses that are manually removed will come back after a year, I can't find that page on the site again but I'm pretty sure I read it there. I read further that the owner of the IP address block the ISP should have an account on Spamhaus and use the management tools to remove any IP addresses that are statically allocated to mail servers.

I ticket Rackspace, they say dynamic addresses change quickly and refer me to a Spamhaus page oblivious to their responsibilities.

I try to send mail to postmaster, webmaster and the only contact address that is on the contact page on the Spamhaus site (that they say not to use) and webmaster bounces, fine, their page is perfect and advice is not important to them, the commercial address has a "we'll get back to you but you should not be sending mail here" message, postmaster has a reply that says "THIS IS THE ONLY REPLY YOU WILL GET" and I must go to the contact page and get lost there again.

Basically I am quite concerned about a comment posted above by someone claiming to be from Spamhaus saying they receive 14 legitimate email queries a week, I would like to know at what address, because I want to be number 15 this week so I can ask for help from someone on how to use their web page to get removed AGAIN from their PBL list.

Sorry to bore any of you other firm supporters and various other pro and against Spamhaus advocates but for an organisation of the size it seems to be (more than 2 people I expect) and affecting so many people (at least 14 per week for the last 5+ years) and having a rather abrasive communication style by many accounts I have read it certainly is hard to generate a support ticket. I'm not sugesting it should be trivial or labeled as "send DOS attacks here" but there should be some way to communicate besides a web page that does not work (if it matters I am using Firefox 10.0.4).

If any of you have a clue why they want to appear so arrogant or have a way to send my plea to a real person there please can you contact me, if I lived in the UK I would visit their office (oops, no one knows where that is either). This is a problem and they are unreachable. Idyllic press (talk) 12:06, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone know why Rackspace offers fixed IP addresses with reverse domain name resolution so that it would conform with Spamhaus requirements but will not go the last mile and list the IP address as serving our static mail server. On top of their lame advice (to visit Spamhaus page) and irrelevant sugestions (to add TXT records to improve my domain name reputation that is without fault) all they hope is that I should elect to use another server (theirs or some affiliate probably) for mail sending instead of the server that is rented for the purpose of mail sending.

Has anyone managed to press the manual (temporary) PBL delisting button successfully in the last 2 weeks?

Does anyone know how to explain to Spamhaus and Rackspace that the guilty before suspicion system is not working for everyone and help me get mails out, we send out less than 10 mails a day. If I suspected conspiracy I would say that it is a NSA mandated thing that all mail must go via very few servers so they can eavesdrop it easier and Spamhaus and Rackspace are getting a commission for inconveniencing people.

I want to do the right thing, I kind of like how the PBL works if implemented as per rules and guidelines but sure as anything it is hard to get hold of the people at Spamhaus to solve a problem. How do the 14 people a week contact them, inquiring minds want to know. Idyllic press (talk) 12:05, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Attack on competitor?
Last year, Spamhaus succeeded in taking a competing antispam site offline for a few days. The site was Spamwise and one of its activities was reportedly that of notifying directory siteowners and the like of spam-related vulnerabilities. Spamhaus reckoned that this activity itself constituted spamming, and therefore blacklisted the site's IP range.

As pointed out by the owner of Spamwise, prior to the site's establishment the intended notification scheme had been carefully checked against Spamhaus' own definition of spam, and found to be permissible.

What made the IP blacklisting even more controversial is that Spamhaus themselves have, and probably still do, engage in notifying open-relay vulns.

(Note: Spamhaus has *NEVER* engaged in "notifying open-relay vulns", therefore this "controversy" is purely imaginary - Please stick to facts only on Wikipedia!).

When questioned as to why Spamhaus considered their own notifications legitimate but the other site's not, Spamhaus quoted the view that it is legitimate to send such notifications to an RFC-defined address such as abuse or postmaster, whereas the sending of such notifications to any other address is not (in their view) legitimate.

Yet, a previous Talk contributor writes, 'Spamhaus did not adhere to the postmaster standard.' If so, it would seem that Spamhaus are themselves in breach of those same protocols. --Anteaus (talk) 11:40, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, look at the other complaints here, it should be clear by now that Spamhaus itself is a highly dubious/fishy "institution". 37.83.6.103 (talk) 20:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

My edits today
I have added refuting allegations from Spamhaus, by their official account on their website. This was done per a combination of WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, as the weight given to the allegations by Spamhaus and others was very very biased and undue weight giving. As such, I've added (neutrally worded) claims from the other side (Stophaus mainly) to balance the coverage of the content. If people want to remove allegations alltogether, that's a different discussion. Charmlet (talk) 03:02, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Operation Wikipedia War
Looks like someone's not happy... 'STOPhaus' are declaring 'war' on Wikipedia... https://www.facebook.com/wikipediawar Announcing "Operation Wikipedia War" STOPhaus says: "In this Operation we are going to bring Wikipedia to its knees. We will be Doxing the Editor's, Editing Pages, Mirroring the Content to "Bad Neighborhood" Wikis, and Destroying the Citations on Wikipedia that have no merit. We will be starting with a series of 1000 Pages and for the next 6 Months we will deface 1000 per day until Wikipedia learns what indifference is. We will be exposing each Editor's real names and we will be petitioning The Court for an Injunction against Wikipedia for hosting Libel-Per-Say. Jimmy Wales aka Jimbo - EXPECT THE SHIT OUT OF US!" ...well isn't that nice, if they're not allowed to vandalise the Spamhaus page they want to 'destroy' Wikipedia... hmm. FirenzeNove (talk) 09:21, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, Charmlet was 'on chat' with the stophaus people on IRC.....I was present as well, though I wasn't making edits, and it was in a 'public' location (the 'english wikipedia help' channel on IRC) where many other people were watching as well...tbh, Charmlet refused to make many of the changes they requested, and was stretching the bounds of policy by doing it at all, but it was a 'obvious good faith attempt by an uninvolved editor' to defuse the drama.
 * As a 'long-standing editor', your addition of 'disclaimers and editorial comments' to the article shows a high level of ignorance of wikipedia content policies, and the 'text' of those disclaimers shows a high level of bias....by policy, therefore, this is an article that you have NO BUSINESS AT ALL EDITING, and your 'input' should only be on the talk page. While I can't speak for User:Fluffernutter, of course, my impression is that the 'page protection' has more to do with your edits than those of others...
 * It is perfectly acceptable to discuss 'allegations' in a wikipedia article, as long as the difference between 'allegations' and 'facts' is made clear. I tried to make it 'exceptionally' clear in my rewrite the difference between 'claims made by stophaus' and 'things that secondary sources asserted as facts'. The mention of their 'asserted justification' was acceptable (and needed, actually) in order to balance the included 'defamatory statements' made about them in the discussion of the attack itself.
 * The 'Spamhaus' pages are /quite/ full of statements that cross FAR over the line to blatant libel, such as describing a person as an 'apparent psychopath', and the fact that their website includes /blatant/ disclaimers saying, essentially, 'we don't claim what we say it true, so don't sue us' makes it very clear that the Spamhaus site is not a 'reliable source' for anything but opinion and 'actions taken by them' such as adding sites to listings.
 * Basically, the 'defamatory statements' made by Stophaus stay within the bounds of legality (as they actually provide evidence for their opinions), while those made on many of the Spamhaus pages blatantly do not. "Descriptions of people and groups" made by Spamhaus on their pages have no place in a Wikipedia article, and treating them as if they are 'unquestioned facts', which seems to be the aim of your COI editing, is totally unacceptable. Revent (talk) 16:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Just in case they might not already have been aware of this "Operation Wikipedia War" threat, I've called it to the attention of the WMF legal office and the Functionaries e-mail list. I'm mentioning this primarily so that we won't have a zillion people independently alerting the legal office.  Apologies in advance for the redundancy if someone else already did this before me.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 16:56, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Good call, but it had been already raised, from what I understand... not that the 'repeated' mention is a problem or anything. Revent (talk) 16:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

(As a quick side note, in the interest of transparency) I 'took it upon myself' to make a post to the Stophaus forum after my rewrite, simply to explain 'what and why' in an attempt to defuse further 'responses' based on the 'reverted' edits or my rewrite, and am now having a 'discussion' with a IP editor who is apparently a 'representative' on Stophaus on my talk page (here... User_talk:Revent). I'm not really trying to discuss the 'content' there, but simply to get across an 'understanding' of how Wikipedia actually works and why the 'threats' are pretty pointless....anyone who wants to weigh in ON THAT SUBJECT, NOT THE CONTENT OF THIS ARTICLE is more than welcome to join that conversation. Revent (talk) 17:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi guys, responding to the ping from Revent here: I protected the article because there was an unacceptable level of back-and-forth reverting going on. As an administrator handling this task, my position is not "this side is right" or "this version is right"; my position is "you guys needed to stop reverting each other and start talking in order to reach consensus about which version is right." To that end, I protected the article to force you all to use the talk page rather than continue reverting each other. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, sorry if I was a bit vague....what I meant by 'your edits' there was, to be more 'explicit', "Responding to a edit by someone else with a long series of edits that have the net effect of restoring the description and use of Spamhaus' unsupported libelous accustions as 'facts supported by a reliable source'. This is blatant POV edit warring with a succession of previously uninvolved editors who have been drawn into the situation in an attempt to resolve the issue, and the protection is OBVIOUSLY quite appropriate.
 * I'm not trying to 'assign blame' in an accusatory sense, (or speak for anyone else) but to get across that the attempts by previously uninvolved editors (Charmlet, Huon, myself, etc) to 'be bold' and fix the issues were an appropriate attempt to fix the issue, and that restoring the 'bias' that was previously in the article (re the use of Spamhaus as a 'reliable source') was out of line and, at least IMO, edit-warring with the 'apparent consensus' shown by multiple uninvolved people making similar changes. Revent (talk) 17:42, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Disclaimer
Why do we need to say the logo was used with permission? It is irrelevant. We can use it anyway under fair use guidelines. Can we please remove this grovelling drivel from the article?  ★ ★ RetroLord★ ★  16:12, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Edits by a group of known spammers vandalising Spamhaus article in "Cyberbunker DDos Spamhaus"
I have attempted some editing of the edited version of "Cyberbunker DDos Spamhaus" by Charmlet (talk) 03:02, 23 June 2013 (UTC). But it's difficult to make much sense of the edits since they a rambling mess of libel by the spammers group "STOPhaus" - the group of Russian and East-European spam hosts who attacked Spamhaus in April with a 300Gbps DDoS attack. This group, STOPhaus, is led by an American spammer named Andrew Stephens (see: http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence/ROK9383/andrew-stephens/spammers-propaganda-site-stophaus-aka-the-stophaus-movement ). These edits by spammers who hate Spamhaus to a Wikipedia article on Spamhaus should never have been allowed by Wikipedia monitors.

The same spammer who leads STOPhaus and who wrote the edits in "Cyberbunker DDos Spamhaus" called for a DDoS attack by Anonymous AGAINST Wikipedia just yesterday, announcing #OpWikipedia to "bring Wikipedia and its staff to their knees!"...

https://www.facebook.com/stephensboy?fref=ts Andrew Stephens 22 June 2013 at 22:22 "Who wants to participate in #OpWikipedia? This Operation will be to address Wikipedia's continued use of biased editors to manipulate content and use of Ironhold to block users from making edits as their platform states is allowed. We will initiate this Operation as of tomorrow and will continue it for the next 6 months. There are 4 Phases to the Op and we will bring Wikipedia and its staff to their knees! EXPECT US!"

Seriously, Wikipedia articles need to be balanced, but you can not try to balance an article about a spam fighting organization by giving free reign to the spammer who hate them to edit the Wikipedia article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by FirenzeNove (talk • contribs) 16:40, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

— FirenzeNove (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * We don't solve the perceived issues by allowing editors with an obvious COI such as yourself to have free reign either! PantherLeapord (talk) 06:09, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I appreciate I have good knowledge of Spamhaus issues over the years, good enough to know what's mostly true and what's not. If you don't want anyone who follows Spamhaus editing the article on Spamhaus, okay, but you are currently giving a platform to the spammer group 'STOPhaus' to dispel untruths into the article with the edits by Charmlet (whom the STOPhaus spammer claimed to have been "on chat with" for 4 hours making those edits). You do not balance an article about (say) the Police by letting the criminals they arrest add a load of untruths baseless accusations and nonsense into the article. At least give the reader the information as to who 'STOPhaus' actually is so the reader can decide: http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence/ROK9383/andrew-stephens/spammers-propaganda-site-stophaus-aka-the-stophaus-movement FirenzeNove (talk) 07:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SPS that source CANNOT be used on this article! PantherLeapord (talk) 07:55, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Understood (living persons), but this article which gives the complete low-down on 'STOPhaus' can be: http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/stophaus/ FirenzeNove (talk) 08:26, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Under certain narrowly defined circumstances, a self-published source may be usable as a source of information about the source itself. See WP:ABOUTSELF, the section of the Verifiability policy just after WP:SPS.  In this specific case, though (a Spamhaus ROKSO page outlining evidence against an individual alleged to be a spam ringleader), I believe WP:BLP would bar our mentioning this page, even if WP:SPS might not.  Note that the same concerns may also prevent us from citing Stophaus's self-published material — especially if it contains accusations against individual Spamhaus people.  In any case, claims about either Spamhaus or Stophaus are best substantiated using material from unrelated third parties (such as the aforementioned Krebs on Security article).  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 17:14, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

On another thing: We need to be careful here when suggesting that another editor is in a conflict of interest w/r/t this or any other article. The relevant guideline (WP:COI) reminds us that "Beliefs and desires alone do not constitute a conflict of interest" — the fact that someone is knowledgeable, passionate, or even arguably tendentious regarding the subject of an article is not enough, by itself, to establish a COI. And we need to be especially careful when tossing COI allegations around in cases where someone has not taken the initiative to disclose their own COI. In particular, everyone needs to remember (or become aware) that "outing" of a Wikipedia editor's identity is not permitted here, even in connection with an attempt to prove someone has a COI — the harassment policy explicitly takes precedence over the COI guideline, and editors can be (and have been) heavily sanctioned for revealing the identity of another editor, even when this was done as part of an apparently good-faith effort to curb COI editing. Hopefully no one here was seriously thinking of going overboard on this issue, but I felt the reminder was called for just in case. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 19:33, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Please understand. The 'stophaus' person came to the IRC #wikipedia-en-help to talk about how to deal with what they perceived as POV 'censorship' of Wikipedia. (This 'implication' wasn't baseless, just clueless.) The discussion wasn't logged (not allowed in that channel) but was public, drawn out by interruptions, and included (overly) detailed analysis and kibitzing about the sources. Charmlet patently did not just 'put in what they said', and it wasn't about 'how do we add this pov'. Revent (talk) 13:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Confused
After reading the sources it seems that: "Greenhost, a Dutch Internet hosting service, said in a detailed blog post that it had found the digital fingerprints of CB3ROB when it examined the rogue traffic that had been directed at Spamhaus." and: "Mr. Kamphuis ....took to Facebook to inform the world that the flood of Internet traffic that threatened to cripple parts of the Web emanated from Stophaus,...". CB3ROB is owned by the one suspect, Sven Kamphuis, and he is the only one claiming where the source of the attack came from. Should we change Stophaus to CB3ROB as the source? If he was a provider for Stophaus he could have easily tried to make them look guilty. We could also phrase it "came from CB3ROB although Kamphuis claims it came from Stophaus" type thing. Do any others involved besides him claim it was Stophaus? The CloudFlare report doesn't mention it. Another source says "Mr. Kamphuis has denied his role in the attack and said he was only a spokesman for Stophaus....". If we are blaming the wrong source we should at least name the person that claims it?--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * TBH, the whole 'issue of who is who' is fairly vague, mainly due to (and this is /explicitly/ a statement of opinion based on my understanding) the 'understandable' attempts of Kamphuis to act as a spokesman of the attackers while avoiding legal responsibility for their actions. The NYT articles are, tbh, rather flawed....not that they say anything that is directly 'wrong', but that they don't make 'what was said in what context' very clear, and it's pretty much impossible to 'clarify' it based on the sources 'currently in the article'... that, as well as simple 'coherency', was a major point of my rewrite...please understand that I did /not/ hunt for new sources, just tried to 'clarify' the prose and differentiate between 'facts' and 'allegations'.
 * Here is my understanding of the points involved (I'm not citing things, intentionally, as some of this is based on 'unsourced statements' and such...)


 * 1) Kamphuis is described as the 'owner', 'person who runs', and 'spokesman of' CyberBunker in various places...given the nature of their business, the 'multiplexing' of their corporate structure, and the fact that they at least 'have claimed in the past' to be headquartered in an 'independent nation' making it more clear without OR would be difficult. The NYT articles are themselves not consistent on how they describe his relation to CyberBunker.
 * 2) Kamphuis has also made statements acting as the self-appointed 'unoffical spokesman' of Stophaus.
 * 3) The NYT and BBC has failed to sufficently 'discriminate' between statements made in those capacities, though I suspect this was due to an 'intentional vagueness' by Kamphuis in his statements to them.
 * 4) The attack was made by a single, anonymous, member of the Stophaus forum, after discussion there, and began 'prior' to the 'request for aid from anons' make by Kamphuis on Facebook.
 * 5) Stophaus has stated that they have no 'association' with CyberBunker, but merely share opinions with them....Kamphuis is apparently a member of the forum, but does not 'control' it.

The 'drama' with Stophaus apparently began due to their gross misunderstanding of Wikipedia content policies, and their blaming Wikipedia for repeating 'misattributed or vague' statements in the newspaper articles....I'm not saying that the NYT was /wrong/, just 'sloppy'. You can see what I mean if you read the various articles in comparison to each other. Revent (talk) 17:28, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Spamhaus is an organization and CB3ROB is an ISP that owns servers I assume. I think any physical attack would have to come from the machines and not the people. As to who was in control of them that will probably come out in court. It the meantime we have a spokesperson from Greenhost that claims they know which machines were used. We only have the one suspect claiming who controlled them and what organization they acted for at the time, if any. We shouldn't just blindly use material from sources without looking at the sources themselves. If it is vague and needs clarification then we should wait for that before inclusion or word it as a claim by a suspect.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:01, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * (nods) That was a major part of my 'rewrite'....trying to make it more clear just what were 'allegations' on each side, and add the 'ambiguity' into the article, instead of treating things simply as facts.....unfortunately, due to the way the edits and protection progressed, the 'removal' of some of that stuck, and the text now is back to the 'including defamatory statements /about/ stophaus', and not mentioning their 'allegations in response' as would be needed to be more neutral....this is (from what I see) a side effect of User:FirenzeNove making his COI edits as a 'long series of changes' instead of as a 'single, net edit', which would have been more appropriate. Revent (talk) 18:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

(just to make it clear, after rereading) The statement (not digging up the exact quote again) that the victims have identified 'stophaus', or words to that effect, was in the NYT article that I used as a reference for that.... that the victims have accused them is, to be honest, the only thing that makes their 'counter allegations' includable'... Revent (talk) 19:31, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Also to be clear, the stophaus 'yada yada is a terrorist' page is a valid primary source for the /opinions/ expressed by stophaus, specifically their 'counter allegations', and the way they are discussed on the page itself (with quotes and such, and then clear 'statements of opinion' about what that means) is 'acceptable'...it's technically not 'libel', in the way it is written, and the source was being used (at least by me) for the details of their 'response' and of the blocking of their DNS provider....that the /page title/ is itself 'inflammatory' (and patently incorrect, as it uses stophaus' 'private' definition of what 'terrorist' means) is not sufficient justification for omitting the source, as the source was not being used to justify or support statements 'in the wikipedia article' to that effect. The removal by FirenzeNove was wrong and incorrectly summarized....page titles in a citation are 'statements of fact' as to what the source is named, not 'assertations by wikipedia' about the page title. Revent (talk) 19:49, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we are agreeing on the same points. Would you like to do a revised draft here and then we can request admin to edit the article if we all agree that it is balanced? Include the logo caption request below as well.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem I see is that an editor would need to perform linguistic gymnastics to conceal the basic fact that 'Stophaus' is not a real organization but is simply a group of hidden spam botnet and malware hosters who are mad at Spamhaus because Spamhaus gets in the way of their cybercrime hosting businesses, as explained well in the Krebs On Security article which the current edit references.


 * I'll stay out of further edits of this section now as quite rightly pointed out I'm pretty bias towards Spamhaus having followed their work for years, but I'd also caution against user Revent editing it as he has openly declared on his talk page a strong bias against Spamhaus (so where I'm too in favour, he's way too against), no offence Revent, this section needs a totally neutral editor and not not one that sits on irc chat with the Stophaus spam gang making edits they'd like to this article. If in doubt, just google for "Stophaus" (no really, try it). FirenzeNove (talk) 03:53, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see the point of mentioning Stophaus at all. If Greenhost is a reasonable spokeperson we could just mention that they claim it was "the digital fingerprints of CB3ROB" and that Kamphuis as the owner of CB3ROB was arrested. Who he was acting for is just speculation/blogs and/or claims made only by him.--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:33, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It would probably be safe to say that most people dislike spam and that Spamhaus is the most widely used DNSBL. Whoever reads this comment, there's a good chance Spamhaus helps protect his or her mailbox from malware, fraudulent solicitations and other kinds of spam. Does an editor really have to be neutral about spammers and spam filtering? Is it even possible? Would a law enforcement officer be allowed to contribute to an article about crime prevention, or would he or she be considered to have a bias against crime? I find this discussion surreal, but maybe that's just because I have so little editing experience here. 88.113.185.91 (talk) 09:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven't read all the articles about spam. This one seems to show there are issues about degrees of spam and various controversies about how they have handled it. We try to keep our articles Neutral point of view so those that feel their spam is justified seem to be mentioned here. --Canoe1967 (talk) 21:41, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I did not 'sit on IRC with them making edits'...I was actually present (but not editing it) during that IRC discussion. I didn't edit the article until after that, and like I said, mainly as an attempt to explain who was who (the previous version didn't identify who StopHaus was) and not include 'vague' attacks against them as 'criminals' without an opposing view.
 * I have a 'personal opinion' about SpamHaus, in that I think there is a lot of 'libel' on their pages, amoung other things...but that's neither here nor there. I have no real interest in them in particular, other than avoiding silly conflict here.
 * As I've mentioned various places, the 'victims' identify 'StopHaus' as the attacker in the New York Times (as I cited in my rewrite). Revent (talk) 12:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * User:Canoe1967 Due to the technical nature of the attack (DNS amplification) it would be entirely possible for the initial attack to have been one 'person' using a botnet (this is what has been 'claimed'). The attack started several days before Kamphuis' "Yo anons" statement. Revent (talk) 13:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I can see your points. I am just wondering if we are carrying an external battle into this article. The victims pointing fingers and making accusations. We do have a third(?) party that mentions whose machines they were and we do have an arrest. We are not in a hurry so once it gets to a court then we can use that material either before or after a court ruling. Making a statement to the NYT if far different than making the same claim in court. Legal registration of machine ownership if very different than legally being part of a group. I can vote in Canada but until I claim/prove that I have a registered membership in a party then I can't be labeled as being a member of any party in an article. Being a 'member' of Stophaus is even more vague as their group probably doesn't have a legal registration that can be sourced/claimed/proven.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That is the problem, the 'Stophaus group' disbanded after the arrest of Kamphuis for the DDoS attack on Spamhaus, since then the 'Stophaus group' has been just one individual and that individual suffers from a boundless delusion of grandeur. The same individual tangled with Wikipedia editors previously when trying to create a Wikipedia entry about himself, see: User_talk:Stephensboy FirenzeNove (talk) 07:56, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

STOPhaus material
A major problem I see with the changes STOPhaus was proposing to make to the article (see [ here]) is that this material was relying on a primary source (stophaus.com) and sources of questionable reliability (heavy.com and cyberguerrilla.org/blog). Indeed, STOPhaus removed an apparently reliable source (a story from Brian Krebs's site, krebsonsecurity.com) in order to make room for questionable sources. I certainly have no problem with having more material in the article critical of Spamhaus, but such material needs to come from reliable sources of the kind generally acceptable on Wikipedia. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 23:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Rich, what you just said was that you are okay with adding controversies Spamhaus has been involved with but any media source that speaks negatively about them is deemed unsuitable for reference, any member of STOPhaus (the largest collective against Spamhaus) has COI issues, and any removal of links that are biased toward Spamhaus is vandalism. How do you propose including any opposing content within those terms?


 * Given the major COI issue STOPhaus have, anything added by them should be instantly removed, and vice versa (anything they removed should be readded.) The same applies if they continue to POV push. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 08:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Luke, if you are going to mention COI as an excuse to censor any member of STOPhaus, although this same Talk Page has reports of Spamhaus Logistics Corp. IP addresses editing their own page, countless links back to Spamhaus' libel site, and the minimization of any controversy concerning Spamhaus, you are obviously advocating propaganda.
 * That is an absurd suggestion. Spamhaus IPs shouldn't be editing the article either. Spamhaus is not a "libel site", not at all. You may not agree with what they do; it still doesn't make them a libel site. And frankly, anyone supporting an organization or group full of spammers, fradusters, etc, like STOPhaus is, is likely to be ignored anyway. Luke no 94  (tell Luke off here) 10:49, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

PantherLeopard called out for being a potential COI user for Spamhaus and quickly deletes the Talk Page Entry
If someone questions my credibility for an edit on this Talk Page, am I permitted to censor the entry so other may not see the potential COI involved? That is what PantherLeopard did when it was brought up that he has a suspicious presence in WP Community concerning the Spamhaus propaganda claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.12.126.22 (talk) 06:41, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting... do you have evidence to support these claims? PantherLeapord (talk) 07:04, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

If you are asking for evidence that you reverted the Talk Page just after you were accused of being biased, it is available in the History tab. If you are referring to the allegations that you have COI in the topic of Spamhaus, see below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.12.126.22 (talk) 07:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Only that you showed up on Wikipedia at the same time there was an edit war between a STOPhaus member and a Spamhaus volunteer, your contributions have been heavily directed towards this particular page, your contribution times seem to coincide with Sam's n.a.n-a.e posts, your interest level in Spamhaus is far above what a typical Wikipedia user or editor would have, and your writing style is a perfect match in STOIPhaus' proprietary "200-point comparison algorithm", that was designed to catch Spamhaus volunteers using nyms. I am sure STOPhaus will put together a detailed report on the allegations shortly.
 * 'proprietary "200-point comparison algorithm"' - Once I am done laughing at the sheer absurdity of the above I'll post a decent response! PantherLeapord (talk) 07:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Not just proprietary but "STOPhaus' proprietary 200-point comparison algorithm" LOL :-) FirenzeNove (talk) 11:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)