4) there _could_ be value in an automated way to tell Earthlink
about abuse;
5) any use of <abuse(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)com> cannot serve that purpose;
Why not? I can't think why an "automated way" such as (4) mentions
couldn't be carried on top of email to abuse(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)com(_dot_)
1) <abuse(_at_)anywhere> is spammed too heavily
2) <abuse(_at_)earthlink> necessarily has earthlink-specific processing
Neither is relevant, I believe.
(1) is irrelevant because random spam will not fit the format of these
automated reports; if spamming fake reports becomes attractive enough
for it to be a problem, whatever other mechanism carries them will have
exactly the same problem. (If the reports are crypto-signed to deal
with report forgery, this can be done over email just as much as it can
over some other channel.)
(2) is necessarily true, since any abuse-report-recipient must
necessarily be doing some kind of recipient-specific processing. But
it's also irrelevant; there's no reason emailed automated reports can't
be shipped off to whatever processing the putative other transport
performs, rather than going into the main abuse@ queue.
For a reporting procedure to be practical, we need to avoid the
N * M problem.
I don't see why carrying them over email produces an N*M problem in any
way that any other transport doesn't - that is, I don't think this
(regardless of how true or false it is) has anything to do with using
mail to abuse@ as the transport.
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