Fighting spammers and phishers (if that is what they are called) is an ongoing battle at BudURL. Staying off of blacklists is also an ongoing battle. We regularly check surbl.org, uribl.org, spamhaus.org, and a couple of others to see if BudURL.com is listed there. Sometimes I wish there was a single definitive source that we could check instead of having to check so many sites. But then again, it appears to me that these sites already wield too much power and wouldn’t want to turn it over to a single gate keeper. Getting flagged on one of these sites can mean that BudURL users cannot send emails with BudURL links while on a flagged list. Email can come to a complete stop for those who depend on emailing for their newsletters or other business reasons. We feel absolutely terrible and sympathize with our users when this happens. Currently to combat spammers we check every single external link in our system against surbl.org multiple times daily. We also forbid the use of other shorteners as long urls to prevent masking of bad domains.
I ask our readers, “What can we be doing better or should be doing to fight malicious users?”
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome. If you prefer, you can email us at support [at] budurl [dot] com.
All the best!
Mike
