[LINK] Spammer trick could send junk email soaring

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 10:41:30PM +1100, Karl Schaffarczyk wrote:
> >ISPs who don't filter spam on outbound mail will get blacklisted.
> >ISPs that do filter won't. problem solved.
> >
> >this isn't a bad thing at all.  it's a good thing.  it will force even lazy
> >and indifferent ISPs to take responsibility for the garbage that their
> >windows-using ignorant menace customers are spewing out on the net.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Craig, Link,
> 
> This type of system is fine until you encounter an ISP such as bigpond.
> 
> If bigpond makes it to a blacklist (and often, they do, and for good 
> reason) the complaints, and loss of customers is worn by a smaller 
> ISP who is doing the blocking. ("my friend who is with bigpond cant 
> send me email, but they can send it to everyone else")

yes, i've had to whitelist bigpond's mail servers because they are continually
getting into blacklists - and it's just not worth the effort of explaining
to customers that it was telstra's own fault that they got blacklisted and
that they DESERVED to be blacklisted, and that they would never bother to
change their spam-friendly or spam-tolerant practices until and unless it
started costing them customers and money.

all true, just not worth the effort.


however, even if large ISPs like bigpond manage to avoid most of the effects
of blacklisting (not all, some people refuse to make RBL exceptions for them
on principle) it is still useful that small and medium-sized
lazy/spam-friendly ISPs will end up blacklisted and forced to change their
habits.  same goes for the thousands of corporate mail servers using crappy
software like Exchange or Notes or Groupwise or other dreck, which are
allegedly "administered" by technlogically illiterate morons who have no clue
how internet mail works.

> This reflects the current situation - if bigpond customers are 
> sending out thousands of pieces of spam per day, then its the smaller 
> ISPs problem. If the smaller ISP customers are sending out spam, then 
> it's the smaller ISPs problem.

that's why i think it is a good thing that spammers are starting to get their
zombies to relay spam through the local ISP's smarthost - telstra's mail
servers find it hard to cope with the load already, if they get 10 times the
mail load because the spam from their customer's infected machines is relayed
by them rather than sent directly, then they will have no choice but to take
action.  i.e. it will become the large ISP's problem rather than the small
ISP's.

> It hardly seems fair.

no, it isn't and never has been.  one of the many problems with spam is that
it is theft, it offloads the cost of advertising onto third parties.

> Worse, it means that providers such as bigpond just dont care, and
> will continue to have customers who spam (either through security
> holes, or by means of their customers deliberately spamming).

if even a small but noticable percentage of the zombie spam is relayed through
their servers, they will have no choice but to care - they will not be able to
cope with the load if they don't.  they've already had several instances where
they had mail outages of more than a few days, and they lost customers over it
- they'll lose even more if their mail servers are so slow and unreliable that
they're effectively useless for weeks or months on end.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)