the file format
The web-o-trust.txt file should be published on your website (personal
or corporate depending on whose trustworthiness you're offering). It
should be a text/plain file. It should be made up entirely of lines
that consist of a keyword followed by a colon, whitespace, and an
associated value through the end of the line. There is no limit on
the length of the line. You will find an explanation of the keywords
below.
The file may have comments. Comments begin with an '#' at the
left-hand margin and go through the end of the line. The file may
have blank lines. The first keyword should be version.
Keywords which are not in the list below are a syntax error.
keywords
- version -- gives the version of this document. It
should be http://web-o-trust.org/1.01.html. When you
write a web-o-trust file using this document, you should use this
version in your file.
- ip -- specifies a single IP address or IP subnet in
CIDR format. CIDR format is the subnet address followed by a slash
followed by the number of zero bits in the subnet mask. For example,
you can list your entire email cluster from 192.203.178.16 through
192.203.178.31 with 192.203.178.16/28. Remember that you
are whitelisting SMTP clients. If you list "too many" IP addresses,
you may find that people don't trust you, just on general principles.
- include -- specifies other web-o-trust files belonging to people
that you trust. It should be a URL. Following the URL is an
optional number which is the level of trust in them. If you don't
specify a number, then you aren't specifying any level. If you
specify zero, then you are recursively specifying everyone that they
trust, and everyone they trust, etc. Zero acts as infinity. If you
specify one, then you are trusting them, and nobody they trust. If
you specify two, you are trusting them and the people they trust,
but that's it. If you specify three, then you are trusting them,
the people they trust, and the people THEY trust.
- omit -- specifies web-o-trust files belonging to
people that you have reason not to trust. Perhaps they have gotten
into the network through nefarious means, and you want to warn people
that they might not be trustworthy. If you have no negative
information about a web-o-trust file, then don't omit it.
- keepfor -- specifies the number of seconds you want people to hold
onto your web-o-trust file before they come looking for a new one.
This lets you control how often your file is accessed.
- contact -- specifies a URL through which you may be contacted.
Presumably this would be a mailto: or http: address of a page with
your contact information, or a form to send email. Could also be a
sip: address.
- zone -- specifies the name of a DNSBL zone created
from this file (if any).
The ip, include, omit lines
may appear more than once. The only required line is
version. You are strongly recommended to include a
contact line, otherwise people might choose not to trust
you.
example
This file
is included below.
version: web-o-trust-1.0
ip: 127.0.0.1
ip: 127.0.2.0/24
include: http://pygps.org/web-o-trust.txt 3
include: http://qmail.org/web-o-trust.txt 2
include: http://crynwr.com/web-o-trust.txt 1
omit: http://www.scottyrichter.net/web-o-trust.txt
contact: mailto:whitelist-entry@russnelson.com
keepfor: 3600
If you include this example file, you will get 127.0.0.1,
127.0.2.0/24, and whatever ip lines are found in
crynwr.com/web-o-trust.txt. You'll also get the ip lines found in
qmail.org/web-o-trust.txt and the ip lines found in any files it
includes. You'll also get the ip lines found in
pygps.org/web-o-trust.txt, any files it includes, and any files those
files include, unless the files it includes have a trust level of one.
The trust level for those files is already down to two.
The above example file produces the rbldns data file below.
127.0.0.1
127.0.2.0/24
127.0.0.2
127.0.0.3
127.0.0.4
Russell Nelson
Last modified: Thu Dec 11 15:29:23 EST 2003