The Open Relay DataBase, the spam fighting organisation that lists open relays historically exploited by spammers to send junk mail, is to close down at the end of the year, five and a half years after it was first established.

Spammers' increased use of networks of compromised PCs has made its work less relevant while its volunteers have moved onto other projects, making ORDB.org less important to the fight against junk mail.

"It's been a case of a long goodbye as very little work has gone into maintaining ORDB for a while," a notice on the site explains. "Our volunteer staff has been pre-occupied with other aspects of their lives.

"In addition, the general consensus within the team is that open relay RBLs are no longer the most effective way of preventing spam from entering your network as spammers have changed tactics in recent years, as have the anti-spam community," it adds.

ORDB's mailing list was closed earlier this week and the site itself will be taken offline on 31 December. Sys admins are urged to avoid checking the database through mailing programs ahead of the shutdown and to use alternative spam filtering approaches and blocklists. ®