spam - any Ozemail or Pegasus users here?

[Danny Yee]

[ Cc: link list, Ozemail and Pegasus postmasters, aus.net.mail ]

If I receive no adequate response within the next week from Ozemail
or Pegasus to complaints about email spam from their users, I will
reconfigure my servers to block mail and Web access from within Ozemail
and Pegasus domains.  I will also encourage other system administrators
to do likewise.

Ozemail -- apparently -- doesn't even *read* mail sent to postmaster; nor
do they have an abuse address to send net-abuse reports to.  This is
simply not acceptable: AOL handles complaints promptly, as do MCI,
Netcom, UUnet, and most other big US service providers, so there is no
reason why Australian service providers can not do so.

Pegasus is supposed to be an "activist" ISP, so one would have hoped for
better things from them.  Email spam is straight-forward abuse of a public
good, after all.

It took a while to "train" US service providers to control spammers;
I fear the lesson hasn't crossed the Pacific and we will now have to
repeat it for Australian providers.

I apologise in advance to all the users who will be inconvenienced
by this.  Companies that only care about making profits can only be
influenced by actions which hurt their bottom line, however, and your
displeasure is my only means of attacking that.  I don't know how much
it would cost Ozemail in extra wages to deal with complaints; I don't
know how much Bozzo Brown is worth to Pegasus.  But I hope that they
soon realise that a rotten reputation and unhappy users will cost them
far more.

Danny Yee
Network Administrator
Department of Anatomy & Histology
University of Sydney