Point your mail server at one or both of the following if you wish to consult our data. DNS infrastructure is kindly handled by ClouDNS. As such, we are not aware of any query caps they wish to impose on us; yes, we asked.
- bl.scientificspam.net if you wish to consult our IP address based data.
- rhsbl.scientificspam.net if you wish to consult our domain name based data.
The IP address based data has been there since the beginning, March 2014. The groundwork for the domain name based zone was laid on September 20, 2014, but the zone will only be populated when new spam comes in (i.e. we are not going back on our old data to do this retroactively).
Queries for listed IP addresses will respond with the standard 127.0.0.2.
In line with the Spamhaus DBL conventions, queries for listed domain names will return 127.0.1.2. There is only one type of return code, and it means that the domain name is associated with scientific spam.
TXT queries for listed IP addresses and domain names will be responded to with the following format:
([TAG]) Subject Line from-address yyyymmdd
[TAG] is prefixed if we recognize the spamming party, such as BENTHAM, SCIRP, RESEARCHGATE, RESEARCHANDMARKETS, OMICS, PROTEOGENIX, SEIPUB etc.
Subject lines may be slightly altered to meet requirements for DNS entries. Quotes are replaced by underscores and ampersands with the word “and”, for example. Dates indicate when the listing was created, which aims to be very soon indeed after the reception of the spam, of course.
I created some SpamAsassin rules, here they go:
# # https://scientificspam.net/ # header RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM eval:check_rbl('blscientificspam', 'bl.scientificspam.net.') describe RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM SCIENTIFICSPAM: sender is listed in SCIENTIFICSPAM tflags RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM net reuse RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM lang de describe RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM Senderechner in Liste von bl.scientificspam.net score RCVD_IN_SCIENTIFICSPAM 1.2 header FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL eval:check_rbl_envfrom('rhsblscientificspam', 'rhsbl.scientificspam.net.') describe FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL Envelope sender listed in rhsbl.scientificspam.net tflags FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL net reuse FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL lang de describe FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL Absenderadresse in Liste von rhsbl.scientificspam.net score FROM_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL 1.2Vielen Dank, Herr Hildebrandt!
Since our move to rspamd I created these “rules” for SCIENTIFICSPAM:
# local.d/rbl.conf
# default settings defined here
rbls {
scientificspam_bl {
symbol = “RBL_SCIENTIFICSPAM_BL”;
rbl = “bl.scientificspam.net”;
}
scientificspam_rhsbl {
symbol = “RBL_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL”;
rbl = “rhsbl.scientificspam.net”;
default_emails = true;
}
}
# local.d/rbl_group.conf
symbols = {
“RBL_SCIENTIFICSPAM_BL” {
weight = 1.0;
description = “IP listed in https://scientificspam.net/“;
}
“RBL_SCIENTIFICSPAM_RHSBL” {
weight = 1.0;
description = “Sender listed in https://scientificspam.net/“;
}
}
Excellent! Thank you once again.
I am marketer using an ESP. We only send to our email audience who we acquire organically on site. It’s interesting to find an IP we’re sending from (controlled by the ESP) is listed here.
As it appears, I am not technical enough to understand how to check whether it’s listed and why using nslookup. Can I even check from my home network, which is of course separate from the IP we’re sending our marketing emails from?
ESPs, just like any other parties who verifiably own the IPs involved, are welcome to contact us directly. As a customer, you have no say in their handling of their other customers, and therefore the only thing you can do here is to let them know. They will in all likelihood ignore you, but there’s no other way forward.
Checks for information in public DNS can indeed be made from anywhere on the public Internet. Follow the instructions in IS SOMETHING LISTED?.