Spews is worse than spammers, learn why...

Spammers are frustrating because they disturb you, there is no way to track them down, and you can't get them to stop.

Spews is exactly the same.

  1. They disturb legitimate users: I run a business hosting an email customer support application which does not send unsolicited mail (Neotonic.com). It is very important for us to get email support replies thorough to customers. Numerous times our IP addresses have ended up on the Spews blocklist because of some unsolicited mail sender in the same 256 address subnet. At most colocation facilities, ten or more companies share the same subnet, and it is not easy to change your IP addresses.
  2. There is no way to track them down: Organizations like MAPS are judicious about how they block IP addresses. They do not block entire subnets unless there is cause, and they have an organized appeals process to take care of their oversights. Spews has no such facilities. In fact, the only centralized item in spews is the spews.org website.
  3. You can't get them to stop: They block entire ISPs, and their FAQ says that I'm a victim of "rare inadvertant blocking". The trouble is, we followed their advice, we moved to a new colocation, with an entirely new bandwidth provider, and our new IPs are also spews blocked. There is no organization to appeal to, there is no way to get this fixed.
Legitimate users like us can't keep changing IP addresses because SPEWS is too aggressive and has no organized process. If you want to use a spam advisory system, use MAPS RBL.

Spews is worse than the spammers, because at least I can ignore the spammers.

In fact, the decentralized approach spews uses is most similar to terrorism. You can't stop them, because there is no "them". Most of the users who use Spews don't even know how evil they are. They just think they are helping get rid of a little spam.