On Mon, 2011-12-19 at 22:58 -0800, Mike Hale wrote:
"<rant>I'm not sure why it's necessary to have all these individual "feedback loop" processes anyway. Why can't everyone just send spam reports to the Abuse handles on the relevant WHOIS record?</rant>"
Because that only works for organizations who actually do the right thing when they get complaints. That's a poor way to fight spam.
All* the feedback loop concept does is waste a lot of administrative time on both sides to avoid sending spam reports to organizations which have setup abuse handles but not signed up for that particular feedback loop. Given that sending complaint emails to the abuse handle is virtually cost free, I don't see what's gained by not sending them. What the organization does with those complaints when they receive them is unaffected by the mechanism that routes the complaints to them. Richard * I suspect that someone's lawyers would say that feedback loop processes allow organizations to require agreement to some set of terms (confidentiality, etc.) before receiving the reports and that this is a useful benefit. I disagree, given that you're sending the report to someone who almost certainly could've captured the original email as it transited their network.