More tid-bits of information:

Both specific email bans (user@host.com) and host bans (host.com) are non-working.

I switched to "reverse Email Ban" as a test and got a similar error... all emails are correctly rejected, but even hotmail addresses are rejected in this mode with "hotmail.com" in the list.

No error messages or hickups seen otherwise. Permissions on all files and directories appear to be correct. No changes to ban list were made during the upgrade, and the ban function was operational prior to the upgrade.
"regular email bans" and "regular IP bans" selected. No hacks installed.

PaulC - http://www.MonteCarloSS.com

[This message was edited by Z65_Paul on 30 Jan 02 at 10:23 PM.]