spam issues

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 10:04:05AM -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 11:32:06 -0400 (EDT)
>Net Llama! <netllama at linux-sxs.org> wrote:
...
>> You're assunming that only users in a business environment are
>> effected. In reality, its mostly home users who are getting punished
>> by this stuff, and they don' care why they are blocked, and don't have
>> an 'IT guy' to run to to complain.  They're stuck in the middle of a
>> war that they have no role in.
>> 
>
>Amen.  Most of the discussion thus far has been from the extremely
>communications/email/internet savvy contingent who are in a position to
>control their environment and (unfortunately a byproduct) to wreak havoc
>on unsuspecting (and frequently clueless) home users without (it seems)
>having any effect on the actual spammers.

The home users may be unsuspecting and clueless, but the fact is that their
machines are frequently being used by clueful spammers who take advantage
of the home user's Microsoft system.  It's a bit like putting a machine gun
up where anybody can come in and use it anonymously without fear of the
consequences (and I'm not trying to get a gun control thread started :-).

The broadband providers could mitigate this problem by blocking incoming
traffic to their customer's systems on ports 25, 80, and commonly used
proxy ports.  When @HOME was running the AT&T cable network, they were
doing this (probably in response to ``Code Red'' and ``Nimda'').  When
ATTBI took over they dropped these filters, and COMCAST hasn't put them
back.  I see dozens of relay attempts from attbi/comcast every day, and add
the hosts individually to our local RBL.

Road Runner has very effective anti-spam policies in place, and you rarely
see major abuse from their network.  COMCAST is the most noticeable source
of network abuse, and they appear to ignore complaints and illegal activity
on their network.  History has proven that wholesale blocking is the only
thing that seems to motivate the major providers (e.g. AGIS, uu.net,
Sprint, etc.) to clean up their networks when their legitimate customers
complain or start leaving in droves.  For those who don't remember AGIS was
the home of Cyberpromo and Spamford Wallace, and went out of business as a
result.

Bill
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