Comcast and SORBS

[Rich Braun]

I've had a Linux-based home SMTP server since, well, I first discovered Linux
in 1992.  All of a sudden I'm having trouble getting messages sent out; about
a third of them are getting bounced by spam filters.

Turns out the good folks at SORBS, a service used by all the Big Corporate
Giants in the email business, decided to add the netblock 66.31.0.0/16 to
their SMTP blacklist.  The database entry was created 5 days ago.

For now what I've been doing is adding Big Corporate Giant domains (and
various smaller entities that use SORBS) one-by-one into my
/etc/mail/mailertable file--forcing outbound email for those specific sites to
relay through Comcast's SMTP server.  This is obviously not a reliable
long-term solution, and over time is eroding my privacy rights as more
companies tighten their rules against private SMTP servers.

What's a cost-effective way around this?  Dump Comcast for an un-blocked
service?  Buy a static IP from Comcast (I can't even figure out how, their
marketing website is useless)?  Buy service at a web-hosting company
somewhere?  Throw in the towel and relay all my email through Comcast, where
it can be readily monitored by nefarious corporate and/or government entities
who do NOT have consumer privacy-interests in mind?

Or should we start a letter-writing campaign to SORBS and other blacklist
providers to come up with an alternative spam-blocking solution that doesn't
drop a sledgehammer on all those of us who prefer to run home-based SMTP
servers to transmit a handful of emails per day?

-rich