Fabel Spamsources - Killing Email

November 05 2018

I already mentioned how I hate RBLs, those lists of "bad servers" can often get a bit crazy. Fabel is one of them.

If you really have to use RBLs, please don't use Fabel. The main issue is that there is no possible way of asking them to unlist your IP unless you have a Google account (and are willing to use that account to manage this request). You will need to give Google your personal details to then go ask Fabel to delist your IP.

There is no other contact information on their website... Well, there is an email address on their site, but this is what I get when I write to them :

<spamNULL[AT]fabel.dk>: host perl.mx.develooper.com[207.171.7.115] said: 554 5.7.1
    Service unavailable; Client host [***.***.***.***] blocked using
    spamsources.fabel.dk; Listed
    http://www.spamsources.fabel.dk/ip/***.***.***.*** (in reply to RCPT TO
    command)

What's the point of an email blacklist if it's not possible to help postmasters fix their servers ? Isn't the idea of these lists to help fight Spam in general ? I don't think that Fabel shares that idea. On Fabel's spamsources website, they write :

We recommend using a reputable mail service provider for sending email. Some of them are very inexpensive or even free.

Popular mail providers are for example GMail and FastMail. Mail services for sending mails from your website with strong anti-spam processes include SparkPost, MailGun and MailChimp (Fabel doesn't have any relationship with any of these providers, except as occasional users).

Source: Spamsources.fabel.dk

Allow me to doubt the relationship part, if there really isn't any, then it's even worse than I thought. They are impossible to contact.

I've made a few attempts to reach them, I even tried via Twitter. The first contact attempt I made was 2 years ago. My IPs were probably listed before they were even assigned to me.

In essence, Fabel is a useless "service" that bans any communication that doesn't come from Google itself, it's a tool that promotes of the death of the decentralised Internet. Don't use Fabel unless you don't care about email.