On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 02:01:26PM +0100, michael.dillon@bt.com wrote:
- Automation is far less important than clue. Attempting to compensate for lack of a sufficient number of sufficiently- intelligent, experienced, diligent staff with automation is a known-losing strategy, as anyone who has ever dealt with an IVR system knows.
Given that most of us use routers instead of pigeons to transport our packets, I would suggest that railing against automation is a lost cause here.
I'm not suggesting that automation is bad. I'm suggesting that trying to use it as a substitute for certain things, like "clue", is bad. When used *in conjunction with clue*, it's marvelous.
This sounds like a blanket condemnation of the majority of ISPs in today's Internet.
Yes, it is. I regard it as everyone's primary responsibility to ensure that their operation isn't a (systemic, persistent) operational hazard to the entire rest of the Internet. That's really not a lot to ask... and there was a time when it wasn't necessary to ask, because everyone just did it. Where has that sense of professional responsibility gone?
Why is it that spamtraps are not mentioned at all in MAAWG's best practices documents except the one for senders, i.e. mailing list operators?
I can't answer that, as I didn't write them. But everyone (who's been paying attention) has known for many years that spamtraps are useful for catching at least *some* of the problem, with the useful feature that the worse the problem is, the higher the probability this particular detection method will work. Another example I'll give of a loose-but-useful detection method is that any site which does mass hosting should be screening all new customer domains for patterns like "pay.*pal.*\." and "\.cit.*bank.*\." and flagging for human attention any that match. Again, this won't catch everything, but it will at least give a fighting chance of catching *something*, thus hopefully pre-empting some abuse before it happens and thus minimizing cleanup labor/cost/impact. In addition, this sort of thing actively discourages abusers: sufficiently diligent use of many tactics like this causes them to stay away in droves, which in turn reduces abuse desk workload. But (to go back to the first point) none of it works without smart, skilled, empowered, people, and while automation is an assist, it's no substitute. ---Rsk