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Re: Apologies for the irony (was Re: Principles of Spam-abatement)

2004-03-12 20:49:43
nsb(_at_)guppylake(_dot_)com (Nathaniel Borenstein) writes:

Paul:  I don't know whether or not you want me to be able to send you  
personal mail -- I'd hope so, but if not please imagine for a moment  
that you do.

I do, I do, I really do.  Really.  (I only wish that it were possible.)

Further imagine that you *aren't* serving as your own ISP (i.e. you're
not technical, you're not using the "real" Internet, you can't afford an
expensive connection, whatever.)  I call you on the phone or fax you the
bounce message below and ask you how I can get email to you.  What do you
do?  It's a serious question, and it's not primarily about property
rights, it's about our right to choose to communicate with each other.
-- Nathaniel

I'd tell you what I tell other AT&T Worldnet users -- switch ISP's, find
someone who has an abuse desk and who rigorously defends their digital
reputation.  Or if necessary, put your e-mail at a more distant location
and use IMAP and tunnels to "appear to come from" a more reputable
location.

PS -- Are you really rejecting all mail from comcast.net?  Just  
curious, that's a lot of people.

I think of them as AT&T Worldnet, who once upon a time had a pleasant and
effective abuse desk, and who worked as diligently to keep spam from getting
out as they did to keep it from coming in.  I was very sad when that changed.

From 2001-05-07 through yesterday I have received 893 spams from your /16.
(The number would be much higher if I weren't blackholing parts of the block;
but I do not keep long term records of mail I never received.)

And if it's guppylake.com, it would have been nice if someone had told me
when I was blacklisted, seeing as how I'm the administrator.  --
Nathaniel

Two things.  (1) It's not a blacklist, it's a blackhole list.  Senator
McCarthy popularized one; MAPS popularized the other.  One has to do with
trying to prevent you from finding new consenting adults to associate with;
the other has to do with preventing you from reaching already-nonconsenting
adults.  And (2), since I no longer publish a blackhole list and this is
just my own private one, I would only notify the owner of a listed network
if it suited my private purposes to do so, and in the case of AT&T Worldnet,
I've already determined that they aren't listening to me, so it would not
have suited any private purpose of mine to notify them about it.
-- 
Paul Vixie



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