NAME

       blq - Inquire an email block list server.

SYNOPSIS

       blq [list-id-or-zone[, ...]] host-name-or-address

DESCRIPTION

       Several organizations publish mail abuse lists via DNS.
       blq inquires those lists to determine if a particular host
       is present.

       The list-id-or-zone selects which list to query.  It may
       be the full DNS zone of the block list (such as
       "rbl.maps.vix.com"), one of a number of pre-defined IDs
       (see below), or a list (comma or space delimited) of these
       items.  As distributed, the pre-defined set of IDs
       includes:

        List-Id     List-Zone
        -------     --------------------
        rbl         blackholes.mail-abuse.org
        dul         dialups.mail-abuse.org
        rss         relays.mail-abuse.org
        orbs        relays.orbs.org
        rrss        rss (for back compatibility)
        all         (all the above)
        maps        rbl,dul,rss

       If not specified, the default list-id-or-zone is rbl.

       The host-name-or-address is the query to perform,
       specified either as a name or IP address.  All the block
       lists are indexed by address, not name.  Thus, a given
       hostname will be resolved to an address for the query.

       If a name resolves to multiple addresses, they all will be
       queried.

       The output contains three colon-delimited fields, and
       looks something like:

        blackholes.mail-abuse.org : 192.168.117.89 relay.spamhausen.com : BLOCKED

       The first field lists the zone queried.  The second field
       lists the query: the host address followed by the name it
       resolves to.  The third field lists the result:  "ok" if
       the host is not listed or "BLOCKED" if it is.

SEE ALSO

        http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/
        http://mail-abuse.org/dul/
        http://mail-abuse.org/rss/
        http://www.orbs.org/

DIAGNOSTICS

       An exit status of zero indicates the host was not listed
       ("ok").  An exit status of two indicates that it was
       listed ("BLOCKED").  Any other non-zero exit status is an
       error.

BUGS

       Even though I included support for ORBS and IMRSS, I do
       not support their use for email filtering.  I do use the
       others, but I urge you to visit their web pages, read
       their policies, and decide for yourself.

AUTHOR

        Chip Rosenthal
        <chip@unicom.com>

        $Id: blq,v 1.8 2000/06/05 20:54:13 chip Exp $
        See http://www.unicom.com/sw/#blq for latest version.