What's going on with your SBL listing?

This popped up on my Facebook memories this morning. I don’t post about client events very often, but given I can’t remember even what client this is, I don’t think I’m revealing too much info.
FB memory from a few years ago.

I’m dealing with a client who has a pretty big SBL listing. They’re going through a lot of contortions to fix the problems the SBL is pointing out, but I’m concerned that the SBL listings aren’t the complete story.

I sent them this in an email this morning. I’ve tried to tell them during our calls, but they keep mis-hearing or mis-interpreting what I’m saying. So I write down some speculations and send them by email.

Then a friendly, neighborhood SBL person contacts me and asks me a question about something totally unrelated. So I get about 4 sentences into my question and he says “Imma gonna let you finish, but let me tell you <exactly what I told the client might be going on behind the scenes>.

Yeah. Sometimes I get it right.

Equifax compromise and their insecure response
Google Postmaster bad IP reputation

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They are working on mitigation and hopefully will be fully up and running soon.
Updates when I get them.
Update (8/29/2012): mail to Spamhaus should be back.

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While trying to figure out what to write today, I checked Facebook. Where I saw a post on the Women of Email group asking for help with a Spamhaus listing. I answered the question. Then realized that was probably useable on the blog. So it’s an impromptu Ask Laura question.

We’re listed on Spamhaus’ list, any advice on how to get off? Our email provider has a plan, just looking for more input. 
If you’re on the SBL, there’s a problem (somewhere) with your data collection process. You’re getting addresses that don’t actually belong to your customers / subscribers / whatever.
The fastest way off it to cut WAY back on who you are mailing to. Mail only to addresses you know, for sure, based on activity in the email, want your mail. Then you can start to go through the other addresses and make decisions about how to verify that those addresses belong to the people you think they do.
If you’re at an ESP, do what they tell you to do. Most ESPs have dealt with this before.
One thing to think about, once you get past the crisis stage, is that if you’re on the SBL, it’s likely your delivery is overall pretty bad. These aren’t folks that dramatically list for a single mistake, there’s a pattern. ISPs look at different patterns, but will often find the same answers and delivery will be bad.
It’s important to realize that Spamhaus has 4 or 5 different lists that have different listing criteria. This is for the SBL, there’s also CSS, CBL, PBL, DBL and XBL. They address different problems and have different listing and delisting criteria.

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dDOS spreads to the CBL

Spamhaus has mostly mitigated the dDOS against the Spamhaus website and mailserver, but now the CBL is under attack. They have been working to get that under protection as well, but it’s taking some time.
Right now there are no public channels for delisting from the CBL. The Spamhaus Blog will be updated as things change, and I’ll try and keep things updated here as well.
UPDATE: Cloudflare talks about the scope of the attack

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