Ed Gregory wrote:
> (Roger - I stand corrected about the number of IP addresses in a block. I
> apologizing for not realizing I had to know everything in order to get your
> permission to be involved in Internet services.)
Sarcasm aside, that's TCP/IP 101. Any system administrator should be
aware of it; anyone dealing with technical issues in this area should be
at lerast a competent system administrator. And this is a technical
issue.
> So the AHBL blacklist only blocks 255 innocent mail servers. It still poses
> a very serious threat. It's something that list owners and managers need to
> know about.
OK, fine, inform them.
But what is it a threat to -- your ability to use an upstream provider
with impunity whether they are or are not a spam-scum harbor?
> The ISP who used the AHBL's block-level blacklist to block my client's
> mailing list didn't explain the nuances of the political motive behind
> blacklisting an entire block of addresses.
Of course they didn't. It's not their responsibility to.
> It simply told its customer:
>
> "The reason why you are not receiving mail from pleiku pals is it appears
> they are using a known spam relay (team4champions.com) to send out their
> mailing list."
"Appears*.
>
> This was absolutely incorrect. It didn't say the customer's legitimate
> income email was blocked because a group of activists want to pressure the
> owner of an entire block IP addresses to do something (even if they could)
> to stop the one identified spammer among that 256-address block.
That's your agenda, not theirs.
What they did is as much their right as blocking entire countries they
choose not to take the risk of receiving mail from.
And that's between them and their users.
> It simply
> said, erroneously, that my client's email list was delivered through "known
> spam relay."
No, it didn't. You're leaving out words.
> The AHBL approach might divert bit a few drops from the river of spam. But
> it also prevents ordinary people from receiving legitimate email from the
> rest of the servers in that block.
True. And to some providers, that's very acceptable damage, because in
their minds, if you share the cost of a wire with spammers, you're
subsidizing their spam.
> It blindly intercepts potentially
> life-changing email from their employer or a potential new employer,
> clients, customers, their bank, their lawyer, a lover, a friend.
And, again... as long as the ISP informs their users that they use
strong anti-spam tools that may result in that sort of collateral
damage, that's their right.
> This misguided activism has incalculable and perhaps permanent impact on the
> lives of many, many innocent people.
Those people have two clear choices:
- move to a "less activist" ISP, or
- make it clear to the providers of the people they're corresponding
with that they have zero tolerance for spam-harboring
Your entire argument is based on the idea that people should be free to
let the war on spam go on around them and not have to worry about it.
> People want ISPs to block spam. They don't want ISPs to interfere with their
> legitimate email.
Well, until you find a foolproof way of doing one without the other --
especially bearing in mind that some people out there *want* that penis
extension message -- there will always be false negatives and false
positives of some sort. And some ISPs do their business under the
policy that eliminating all false negatives justifies some level of
false positives -- especially when the cause of the false positives is
the use of a spam-harboring ISP, and the ultimate effect of this kind of
pressure is a user revolt that will force the spam-rats from their safe
harbors.
Also, please don't reply-at-top. This is a conversation -- respond to
each point in line as you choose.
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