The Spamhaus Project is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to track the internet's Spam Gangs, to provide dependable realtime anti-spam protection for internet networks, to work with law enforcement agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.
Founded in 1998, Spamhaus is based in Geneva, Switzerland and London, UK and is run by a dedicated team of 26 investigators and forensics specialists located in 10 countries.
Spamhaus publishes the Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) - a database collating information and evidence on the '100' known worst spam gangs worldwide, used by ISPs to avoid signing up known spammers who would abuse their networks and by law enforcement agencies to help target and mount prosecutions against professional spammers.
Spamhaus maintains a number of realtime spam-blocking databases ('DNSBLs') responsible daily for keeping back the vast majority of spam sent out on the internet. These include the Spamhaus Block List (SBL), the Exploits Block List (XBL) and the Policy Block List (PBL). These DNSBLs are now used by the majority of the internet's email service providers, corporations, universities, governments and military networks.
As a subscriber to the Spamhaus Datafeed Service, you get a continuous feed from the three Spamhaus block lists. When an SMTP connection is made to one of your servers, before the email is accepted, these block lists are checked. If the sender is on the list, the SMTP connection is not accepted. This lets you block spammers from even entering your messaging network.
Spamhaus is widely regarded as Best in Class approach to fighting spam across the globe.
To meet public demand for its DNSBLs, Spamhaus has built one of the biggest DNS infrastructures in the world. Its network of over 45 public DNSBL servers spread across 18 countries serves many billions of DNSBL queries to the world every day.
Spamhaus works with law enforcement cyber-crimes teams worldwide, assisting investigations into phishing, botnets and malware operations and compiling evidence on illegal spam operations.