about
invaluement

Invaluement is a DNSBL created by Rob McEwen, owner of a sole proprietorship called PowerView Systems. (technically, Rob McEwen, d.b.a. “PowerView Systems”). PowerView Systems was started in 1996 and began as a web site design and computer programming business specializing in creating data-driven real estate and e-commerce web sites. PowerView Systems continues to provide such services. (And, naturally, this web site was designed by PowerView Systems!)

During the summer of 2004, Rob McEwen set a new goal to greatly improve the quality of PowerView Systems’ spam filtering system. At the time, the idea was to get the job done quickly and reduce customer complaints about spam. But this “little project” snowballed into one of Rob’s life passions... and, soon, PowerView Systems’ spam filtering was far superior to your average ISP’s spam filtering... and even much better today.

Having already managed a mail server since the mid-90s, from this point forward Rob gained much uncommon knowledge and experience with e-mail and spam filtering issues and technologies. Rob participated often in various anti-spam groups. In June 2005, Rob was granted administrator privileges with SURBL, the world’s most widely used anti-spam blacklist where the domains that spammers use in their links are listed. This provided an insider’s view of SURBL, where Rob participated in many discussions regarding the continual development of SURBL. Rob was also instrumental in adding many mission critical domains to SURBL’s whitelist to prevent false positives. Additionally, Rob participated often with the Spam Assassin forum, since that software is used as a helper app to supplement our mostly custom-written anti-spam software.

During these years, much work was spent on improving our custom written spam filter. Eventually, Rob observed territory not covered by any of the current DNSBLs, and started developing his own DNSBL to fill in the gaps. Thus, the invaluement DNSBL was born in mid-Spring 2007. invaluement started out as a URI list (ivmURI), which is similar to SURBL and URIBL. But ivmSIP, the Sender’s IP list, came soon afterwards.

In the months that followed, some of the world’s most renowned experts on anti-spam blacklists tested the lists and gave much feedback. The invaluement DNSBLs experienced an intense and productive “childhood” at that time. The maturity that most DNSBLs take years to achieve occurred in the span of several months. Massive re-writes and additions to the invaluement engine occurred weekly during that time period. And years of insight went into the careful crafting of this new DNSBL.

The invaluement DNSBL’s first big “break” came in December 2007 when we signed a five-year contract with a very, very, very large and famous anti-spam vendor. (Unfortunately, we are contractually obligated to not reveal the identity of this company!)

In July 2008, our third invaluement DNSBL, ivmSIP/24 was born. And the web site was finally launched.

The hands-holding-globe logo was inspired by the fact that literally two hands created the invaluement DNSBL, and these lists are already having a global impact. The combined number of people whose spam filtering benefits from the invaluement lists is into the millions. The combined time-savings and productivity gains from millions of people having less spam is enormous. Additionally, there are probably some folks (enjoying life!) today who didn’t lose their life savings because they did not become a victim of a phishing scam since that spam never arrived -- instead, it was blocked by their spam filter as a direct result of an invaluement DNSBL listing. We are, as Jack Kemp would say, a “public servant in the private sector”, and are accomplishing in this battle against spam more than any billions of $$ government program can do... all at a fraction of the cost.

Our next big step is to finally spend more time getting the word out about our lists. Many anti-spam vendors and ISPs are not yet familar with our DNSBLs! Also, eventually, our business name will change to invaluement, LLC, when we incorporate later this year.

about
invaluement