BrightCloud URL-Filter is rubbish

[mhuels]

We just have declared to block the category "spam-urls" on the firewall.

Since then, a lot of normal german URLs is blocked wrongly. For instance www.ske.de (banking) or www.paderborn.com (official city-website).

I am wondering, how a website could be a email spam category. Or do i think wrong?

mfg

Manfred

[rferry]

Have you tried submitting the URL and/or domains to Brightcloud to have the research the sites and potentially re-categorize?  The also ask what you believe the site should be classifed as.

I do wonder how long the process takes and also wonder why the URL pattern database is only retrieved once a day (unlike the AV and Threats that are updated once an hour).

BF

[mhuels]

Yes i send some hints to Brightcloud. But after a while i removed the block rule because of the large number of Websites in this category. I guess, the category is for Email-Application-Rules only and not very reliably.

[dyang]

Hello,

BrightCloud classifies URLs as "spam-URL" as URLs that are contained in spam messages.  You can find the full list of category descriptions here:

http://www.brightcloud.com/support/catdescription.php

Please do continue to submit category change requests as they will only help to improve the database.  Should you also have a long list of URLs that you would like to submit changes for, you may also open a ticket with support to submit your entire list.

Thanks,

Doris

[dagibbs]

rferry wrote:
Have you tried submitting the URL and/or domains to Brightcloud to have the research the sites and potentially re-categorize?  The also ask what you believe the site should be classifed as.
I do wonder how long the process takes and also wonder why the URL pattern database is only retrieved once a day (unlike the AV and Threats that are updated once an hour).
BF

I've had to reclassify numerous URL's, and generally the process is completed in 48 hours (24 for them to modify the database and publish, another 2 for it to be applied to the PA in the next scheduled download).

The URL database is only retrieved once a day because as far as I can tell Brightcloud only publish updates once a day - so there's no point in doing it more often.

Cheers.