bjoyce
No list is "better" than another. They do have different rules for listing though.
Entries on RBL lists change all the time, as IP's become listed and delisted.
Note also that mail coming from a hotmail address (or any other large email system), will most likely come from a number of different servers with different IP's. One of those IP's may be listed whereas others are not listed, so therefore some mail from hotmail (or other large systems) addresses gets blocked and some does not. It just depends which email server was actually used to route the piece of email that was sent.
You must make a site policy decision about which RBL lists to use, and which ones not to use. Read about the listing criteria on each lists web site.
Eg spamcop will block all hotmail so if you want to receive email from hotmail accounts then definitely do not use the spamcop list etc etc.
A very conservative choice of RBL's is only
zen.spamhaus.org and whois.rfc-ignorant.org
I noticed that some free accounts like hotmail & gmail & smaller ISP's are getting listed on dnsbl.sorbs.net, so that's not recommended if you want to reliably receive email from those accounts.
The lists referred to in my howto are a little dated now although mostly valid with a couple of exceptions. There are lots of new lists, see the Wiki (upgrading to sme7 ?) for the default settings used in sme7.2, which are not enabled by default so choose wisely.
Start with just the two lists I suggested above, wait a while eg two or three weeks, before adding an additional list, then wait another few weeks, before adding another list. Only add one list at a time and then wait and see what effect that has and if you receive reports of "wanted" email being blocked.
Remove the list if it blocks wanted email. Adding or removing one list at a time allows you to assess the effect of doing so.
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