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How does senderbase figure its reputation rating?


rconner

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Apropos of Senderbase (metioned in a previous thread), I entered my own domain into it and found that it got a "neutral" score. Wondering why it wouldn't have been better than that, I checked the site and found Senderbase's explanations extraordinarily confusing and circular.

  • If you get a "good" rating from them, this means that "little or no threat activity has been detected" from you, and your mail is "not likely to be filtered or blocked."
  • If you get a "neutral" rating, it says that you are "within accpetable parameters" (meaning I guess that you may still be "filtered or blocked" (although not by Senderbase). I have to assume here that "within acceptable parameters" means that you don't originate threats (just like the "good" people).

So, near as I can figure, the difference between "good" and "neutral" is the fact that you could get blocked by people over whom Senderbase has no control. But why is Senderbase basing its ratings on other peoples' behaviors? How do they assess those behaviors?

To cut to the chase, why is google.com rated "good" when I am 97% positive that they originate more threat activity (LOTS more of it) than does rickconner.net, which gets "neutral"? What would I have to do to rate a "good?" Open a multi-billion dollar search engine company and use it to redirect to spam websites and to provide e-mail service to 419 scammers?

-- rick (very grouchy today)

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Hi, Rick,

...:google: is your friend! If you go to the top of the page and type "senderbase reputation" into the field to the right of the "Search for -->" button near the top of the page and click either that button or the "GO" button to the right, you'll see several hits. The first hit I see is to the SpamCop Wiki and the article there has a link to a PDF document that might help answer your question.

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The first hit I see is to the SpamCop Wiki and the article there has a link to a PDF document that might help answer your question.
Wow! Who'd've thought there'd be be info in the Wiki? Not me, apparently.

The PDF still seems a bit double-talky, but what I gather is essentially what Miss Betsy says: If you are a big operation, and they trust you, they give you a "good" rating. If you are a demonstrated bad guy, you get a "Poor" rating. Everyone else in the Vast Middle gets "Neutral."

Specifically, it refers to volumes of "sending" (which includes all mail, not just spam), which may also move you up the scale. So, sounds like I better get on the ball and send a few thousand more e-mails than I do now.

-- rick

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I don't know whether senderbase takes 'reviews' like McAfee does. (...) But if it did, you could get all your friends to send in reviews.

Not that big of a deal, I'm happy to be "neutral" (along with the Swiss).

BTW, I signed up with McAfee to post comments, and did post a couple, but I decided that there were plenty of others covering this particular waterfront, and that I couldn't actually spend all of my free time dealing with spam.

-- rick

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...I couldn't actually spend all of my free time dealing with spam.
Yes you could! :D Well, my wife seems to think *I* do. Absolute calumny of course, I do all sorts of other things, examples of which just happen not to come readily to mind at the moment but maybe sleep is/used to be one of them.
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