North American Network Operators Group
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Re: williams spamhaus blacklist

  • From: Steve Linford
  • Date: Thu Sep 25 03:33:02 2003

(Apologies to nanog, I make a point of not discussing spam issues here, but I feel an uncontrollable urge to respond to this one as it concerns Spamhaus directly)

At 20:01 -0400 (GMT) 24/9/03, Leo Bicknell wrote:
In a message written on Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 07:42:39PM -0400, Richard Welty wrote:
 there's nothing alleged about it. the Eddy Marin spam gang in Boca Raton is
 one of the nastiest bunches of vile spamming slime you will ever see. this
 is all extremely well documented. go see the spamhaus site for
 documentation, it's all there.

 What you're missing in my argument is that it doesn't matter.  I
 have no idea who Eddy Marin is, nor do I care.
Eddy Marin is The Spam King, not your average garden-variety spammer. You might not care who Marin is but we unfortunately have to.

 Blocking wcg's corporate mail servers is not the solution.
It's not a nice solution but it's sometimes the only solution available (to us). It's not an easy decision and it's a very rare one for us, but when a provider hosts a major spam gang long-term and looks set to continue indefinitely, escalating the issue by listing the corporate mail relays focuses the escalation only on the provider himself and not on his customers. We at that moment in time deem the provider to be 'knowingly supplying a spam support service'.

 but it may also harm a lot of "innocent"
 communications, sales talking to clients, other wiltel customers
 requesting support, heck, the secretary ordering lunch to be
 delivered.
The Internet is now brimming with people who are almost in tears each time they check their mail and sort through their spam to see if there's any mail in it. Well over 50% of all email on the Internet is now spam (most ISPs say 60%+ of their incoming mail). That a provider's CEO, sales staff, or the secretary ordering lunch are inconvenienced due to an escalation caused by them allowing known spammers to cause such problems for all the rest of the Internet, is not our prime concern. The arguments of whether it's right or wrong can go on indefinitely but until someone invents a better solution this is all we have.

 There are laws against spam.  If you have evidence, sue in civil
 court, or get a DA to go for it in criminal court.

That's a joke right?


 Osama and his followers [...]
I see, perhaps I shouldn't have responded to this post afterall. But for the benefit of those providers on nanag who use our SBL system, rest assured we will be removing the escalation 'any minute now' as WCG are now in contact with us and I understand are pulling spammer plugs.

Regards,

--
Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org