8. January 2001 - new web host. Around November 10, organization named Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC (MAPS, http://www.mail-abuse.org) put a block of our web hosting provider's IP addresses to his Realtime Blackhole List (RBL). The RBL list is a black list of IP addresses that will be blocked (filtered out), so people actually cannot visit those sites (not people of a specific ISP, but more then 50% of all Internet users, as they advertise). Unfortunately, IP address of our server was also in the range these blocked addresses, so for many people (including us) it was impossible to connect our web site. All e-mails addressed to us was sent back to sender without any explanation. MAPS did not sent us any notices about this action. It took several days to figure out what was actually happening, since at first sight it only looked that there were some weird connection problems, nothing pointed to their action (actually we didn't even know about such filtering system then). When we figured out what was happening, we immediately mailed to MAPS with request to remove our server from their RBL list, but we did not get any reply. We informed then our ISP (http://www.et.ee) who also did not have success. After that we contacted with the guy who suggested to put this large block of IP addresses to the RBL database (Steve Linford, [email protected] ). He found himself not guilty, since *SOME* of the IP addresses blocked were used by spammers. Yes some, but not ours! Steve Lindfor was not opened for resolving the problem and only advertised other hosters: "Although it affects many Media3 customers, the RBL action is against your host Media 3 Technologies, not you" "Uhm, Media3 is less than half the size of most of the other hosting companies on that list, and is miniscule compared to good hosting firms like Verio" But Media3.net was a good host for us. There is no matter how big and where the company is, the secvice is important and Media3 service was excellent to this point. As our business was hurt greatly, we concidered to sue Mail Abuse Prevention System AND Steve Linford. After discussing the lawyers it turned out that the quickest and easiest solution is just to change the host. Our new host is now Intermedia.net and we are satisfied with them. They are good and reliable host.   Summary While the idea of such filtering list looks very positive at first sight (less spam), for many people who have involved creating such system(s), it is a place for showing personal hate and revenge, as it turns out. If people don't care, whom they put in such black databases, how they can manage a database like this at all? That shows clearly, that actually, they don't care at all...