MAPS RBL

The Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) is an organization that provides anti-spam support by maintaining a DNSBL. They provide five black lists, categorising why an address or an IP block is listed:

The acronym MAPS is spam spelled backwards.

MAPS was founded in 1996 as a non-profit organization to pioneer innovative anti-spam techniques (e-mail).

The early history of MAPS is the History of DNSBLs itself. Dave Rand and Paul Vixie, well known Internet software engineers, started keeping a list of IP addresses which had sent out spam or engaged in other behavior they found objectionable. The list became known as the Real-time Blackhole List (RBL). Many network managers wanted to use the RBL to block unwanted e-mail. Thus, Rand and Vixie created a DNS-based distribution scheme which quickly became popular.

Being certain there was an absolute right to publish an anti-spam blacklist, MAPS published a "How to Sue Us" page, inviting spammers to sue them and help them create case law. In 2000 MAPS was the named defendant in no fewer than three lawsuits, being sued by Yesmail, Media3, and survey giant Harris Interactive. As the first lawsuits came in, MAPS brought in Anne P. Mitchell as their Director of Legal and Public Affairs.

In 2001 the company started to require a subscription for accessing their lists. Non-subscribed users received a dummy unlisted response. MAPS explained as their expectation to get enough funds from free support failed, they were forcied to make this decision. However, the spirit of the company remained one of a non-profit organization. Their subscription page was quite hidden in their .org web site, and their fax-based subscription mechanism was rather awkward.

In 2004 MAPS became a division of Kelkea, Inc, moved from Redwood City to San Jose, and from .org to .com. Dave Rand was the founder and CEO of Kelkea at the time.

In June 2005, Trend Micro, Inc. acquired Kelkea, which brought substantial improvement to the subscription mechanism, including a fully automated method for getting temporary subscriptions. In addition, subscribers were provided with personalised web pages where they can view reports, and also set up whitelisting and blacklisting options (whitelisting is particularly convenient, as it allows to whitelist thousands of IP addresses with a few clicks).

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Wikipedia