Frequently Asked Questions, Comments and Answers.

• 12 SEP 2016 The Website is back on a new system, after the old one crashed. Performance should be much better now..

• 17 DEC 2011 False positives have been reduced still further, see the blog referred to below as an example. We have put some new text on the FAQ page in various languages in order to help. Usenet's news admin net-abuse email is not the place for removal requests. Those folks in NANAE asking for evidence of Apews usage should check out that blog, email headers have been posted and they're blocking with no whitelist, supposedly 97% spam is caught and rejected.

• 16 NOV 2011 The APEWS Administrators have noticed a blog that is publishing errors resulting from the use of our data. They are also inviting others to publish false positives so we will watch that space from time to time, see http://apews-user.blogspot.com. So far there is only one FP which has been checked and found to be correct but already delisted. At least now there is no need or excuse to bug the folks at the USENET net-abuse newsgroup (NANAE).

• 20 OCT 2011 In order that the APEWS data can be used for outright blocking, and therefore further save server resources and deny spammers even delivery, we have been modifying the dataset of L2.APEWS.ORG, the IP address based data. Administrators here have business mail servers running with approx 96% of all spam caught correctly and approx 0.5% (yes, half of one per cent) false positives. Your results may differ depending on your mailstream, remember you only need to test the connecting IP address and ignore other IP addresses that may appear during SMTP. Contrary to negative comments about the dataset, we challenge any user to publish their false positives showing how the L2.APEWS.ORG dataset was in error. Put that information in a public place so that Administrators here can find it and improve the dataset where necessary. Help us to help you.

• 22 APR 2011 Apologies to users who are experiencing DNS query delays, we are busier due to more users and continued DDOS attacks. Serious offers for operating a mirror should be published in a public place where the administrators can find it. We recommend the use of rsync in order to maintain a local copy of the latest data and avoid real-time lookups.

• Note for the webmaster of www.intra2net.com, you still have written that we are "no longer available" on your statistics page. That is not factually correct, we suffered a DDOS but have been back online for weeks. You are welcome to continue testing our dataset, thank you.

• 25 OCT 2010 We are online again after a massive DDOS against our infrastructure.
  It seems some spammers are really pissed because of our good work.

• 23 APR 2010 We had to order an Privacy Service to get our DNS restored.
  A word to Spamtard: Fuck you little rat.

• 21 APR 2010 You can still rsync data by substituting the domain for the IP address as follows;

• 21 APR 2010 rsync -avz 185.117.73.144::APEWS/l2.apews.org followed by your directory destination for the zone files, L1 domain list similarly

• 21 APR 2010 Temporary glitch with the domain hosting service, stay tuned...

• 17 JAN 2010 Apews has several months now of being consistently below 0.5% False Positive error rate or less. In commercial usage terms, less than 1% is often regarded as a benchmark for a serious and usable list which we clearly are. True positives are between 90% and 98% according to our user base. Much will depend on your particular mail stream. Note, these results are out of the box, that is before any white listing or filtering. As we recommend, if you use your whitelist ahead of this DNSBL, your results will be even better. Anywhere you see folks stating otherwise is just a sign of our system being effective, spammers hurting and their wishful thinking.

• 06 APR 2009 APEWS was offline during the weekend because of a server outage. The power has since been restored.

• 03 DEC 2008 Rumor goes that APEWS would no longer be maintained. That is not true. We merely experienced some temporary techical issues.

• 19 FEB 2008 We have found many trolls (most in NANAE) talking crap about us. It is bullshit to claim that we couldn't be used for blocking. Many people do it. Test our lists yourself instead. You will find the result amazing.

• 22 SEP 2007 A failure in our database updater left our zones frozen for 20 days. Thanks to John G. from NANAE for bringing this to our attention.

• 30 AUG 2007 The operator of our beloved SPEWS got hit by a truck 1 year ago and died 30th August 2006.
  We have chosen to make the 30th August SPEWS Memorial day.
  To annoy spammers and spamsupporters we recommend to shutdown all mailservers every 30th August for 24 hours.

• 16 AUG 2007 We have asked our former mirrors to wildcard the no longer valid zones so that our users become aware that they have to switch to our new zones, if they want to continue using us.
  If your mail was blocked because of this we apologize but this was our only way to inform you that you need to switch zones immediatley.

• 13 AUG 2007 APEWS is no longer mirrored by SORBS and UCEPROTECT. Please see here how you can use our lists from now on.

• 29 JUL 2007 Blacklist compared says both of our lists are the most effective blocklists available, and they are FREE.

• 14 JUN 2007 FAQ A 41 and A 42 adjusted to make it even clearer who may and who should not post to newsgroups.

• 13 JUN 2007 TQMCUBE is no longer an official APEWS mirror.
  Our zones at TQMCUBE are still unreachable and it seems TQMCUBE is running on AUTOPILOT.
  No one has noticed a lifesign of DCH since 21st March 2007.

• 29 MAY 2007 APEWS was modified to improve speed and handling again.

• 25 MAY 2007 APEWS was offline today because of an harddisk crash - replaced and restored from backup, no data loss.

• 05 MAY 2007 Blacklist compared says that our level1 is the worlds most effective RHS blocklist.

• 15 FEB 2007 New database installed. Our 9 operators can now work together.

• 08 FEB 2007 APEWS - System was updated to improve speed and handling.

• 30 JAN 2007 FAQ A 21 and A 22 adjusted to make it clear that you only have best results if you use *both* Levels for blocking.

• 20 JAN 2007 Blacklist compared shows our level1 at position 5 and our level2 at position 30.

• 18 JAN 2007 Fixed some nasty bugs in our website.

• 17 JAN 2007 Fun is over. APEWS has started escalations.

• 16 JAN 2007 We found our zones at TQMCUBE and SORBS have technical issues.
  We strongly recommend to use our zones mirrored by UCEPROTECT at this time

• 13 JAN 2007 TQMCUBE becomes official APEWS Mirror.

• 12 JAN 2007 APEWS posted to NANAB about it's start.

• 10 JAN 2007 UCEPROTECT becomes official APEWS Mirror.

• 09 JAN 2007 SORBS becomes official APEWS Mirror.

• 01 JAN 2007 APEWS goes live. Zones are now online.

• 28 DEC 2006 APEWS was built by some people thinking SPEWS is dead but their work was great. So we decided to countinue their great work and present a new up to date list in SPEWS-style, and even make it even more effective.