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RE: Spammer-slammer algorithm

1997-10-25 06:57:10
On Sat, 25 Oct 1997, Walter Dnes wrote:

  I'm an end-user with a popmail client, not the sysop at my ISP.

Time to nudge your ISP.  :-)

Another problem is that lawyers for the spammers would probably
jump all over that.  The reason that CIS, AOL, etc, defeated the
spammers' lawsuits is that their filters are set up so that the
ISP's customers have to ask to have their email filtered.  Thus
the ISP can say that they aren't imposing filtering; the customer
is.

Au contraire... I don't mean to argue with you, since we're on the same
side, but there's no basis for legal action against an ISP that's
filtering.

You buy an account on my ISP.  I let you dial in, get your mail, whatever.
That does not make your mailbo yours.  It's still mine.  The information
within it is yours, but the equipment it's on and the bandwidth it's using
is mine.  Therefore I have a right to filter it without asking.

Now, that was a devil's advocate view from the ISP's side.  I'm sure the
"real" rights lie somewhere in between.  Time will tell.  :)

  Then those hosts will end up on blacklists as well.  The incentive
will come from the fact that a lot of *LEGITIMATE* email from these
machines will end up in /dev/null, and customers will move away
from those ISP's once they realize that their mail isn't being
received because they're on a blacklisted host.

Agreed.  For instance, no one can mail me from web2010.com anymore.
They're basically a good outfit, but they don't do enough to control spam,
so their valid customers lose out if they try to mail me.  Sorry.

By that same token, I filter out mail by people who don't do anything
about spam when they can, even if they're not involved in the spam
directory.  conradpromotions.com for instance.  They host roughly 200
vanity email domains.  I haven't seen spam from their domains, but I have
seen spam (from a UUnet dialup) advertising one of their domains.  I wrote
their admin about it, and since he called me "pathetic" for asking that he
not provide web hosting to known Internet abusers, I now filter anything
from any of those 200 domains.

Sure, I'm just one guy, but it's the thought that counts.  :)

-- 
Andrew O. Smith - aos(_at_)insync(_dot_)net    | "Reality is that which, when 
you stop
Sysadmin, Insync Internet Services  |  believing in it, doesn't go away."
BOFH, Wielder of the sacred LART    |           -- Philip K. Dick