DNSWL
Encyclopedia
DNSWL is both a generic term and a specific list. The specific list DNSWL.org, lists over 50,000 legitimate SMTP
senders.
is not a mature field. Common computer processes used for spam filtering apply heuristics to avoid presenting too many useless messages to email recipients. This has the severe impact of reducing SMTP reliability by creating false positives; i.e., silently dropping legitimate messages. Whitelists tackle the task of vouching for a sender, which implies identifying an accountable party that the sender belongs to.
For IPv6
, blacklisting is not a realistic option, because of the greatly increased addresses. So whitelisting can be used to reduce a huge address space to a set of manageable size: first build a global whitelist of IPv6 registered senders, and second blacklist within that. By accepting all authentic sender registration request, it is at least possible to eliminate spambot
s.
DNSWL.org lists IP addresses, but also hold domain names, category, and email contact addresses. Each IP address is given a "trustworthiness" level; applications (e.g., SpamAssassin
) typically decrease the "spamminess" score of a message by a value proportional to that level.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for electronic mail transmission across Internet Protocol networks. SMTP was first defined by RFC 821 , and last updated by RFC 5321 which includes the extended SMTP additions, and is the protocol in widespread use today...
senders.
Generic need for whitelisting
Natural language understandingNatural language understanding
Natural language understanding is a subtopic of natural language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension....
is not a mature field. Common computer processes used for spam filtering apply heuristics to avoid presenting too many useless messages to email recipients. This has the severe impact of reducing SMTP reliability by creating false positives; i.e., silently dropping legitimate messages. Whitelists tackle the task of vouching for a sender, which implies identifying an accountable party that the sender belongs to.
For IPv6
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol . It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4...
, blacklisting is not a realistic option, because of the greatly increased addresses. So whitelisting can be used to reduce a huge address space to a set of manageable size: first build a global whitelist of IPv6 registered senders, and second blacklist within that. By accepting all authentic sender registration request, it is at least possible to eliminate spambot
Spambot
A spambot is an automated computer program designed to assist in the sending of spam. Spambots usually create fake accounts and send spam using them, although it would be obvious that a spambot is sending it...
s.
DNSWL.org
DNSWL.org was founded on 1 November 2006 by Matthias Leisi. Legitimate senders can register for free. Most DNS servers are sponsored by various organizations worldwide.DNSWL.org lists IP addresses, but also hold domain names, category, and email contact addresses. Each IP address is given a "trustworthiness" level; applications (e.g., SpamAssassin
SpamAssassin
SpamAssassin is a computer program released under the Apache License 2.0 used for e-mail spam filtering based on content-matching rules. It is now part of the Apache Foundation....
) typically decrease the "spamminess" score of a message by a value proportional to that level.