On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 09:22:02PM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:
build expertise on managing it. If you go to SpamHaus you will see a major ISP and their netblocks listed and associated with known spammers. What is this ISP doing about this? Nothing! ?My guess is that they look at their
'nothing' that you can see? or nothing? or something you can't see or that's taking longer than you'd expect/like? There certainly are bad actors out there, but I think the majority are doing things to keep clean, perhaps not in the manner you would like (or the speed you would like or with as much public information as you'd like).
[ engage cynical mode] It's the responsibilty of all operations to ensure that they're not persistent or egregious sources of abuse. *Some* operations handle that reasonably well, but unfortunately many do not -- which is why there are now hundreds of blacklists (of varying intent, design, operation, and so on). If ISPs et.al. were doing their jobs properly, there would be no need for any of these to exist. But they're not, which is why so many people have taken the time and trouble to create them. Overall ISP performance in re abuse handling is miserable and has been for many years, and that includes everything from a lack of even perfunctory due diligence ("30 seconds with Google") to failure to handle the abuse role address properly and promptly to alarming naivete' ("what did you THINK they were doing with an entire /24 full of nonsense domain names?") to deployment of "anti-spam" measures that make the problem worse and inflict abuse on third parties to... This is hardly surprising: there are few, if any, consequences for doing so, and of course it's far more profitable to not just turn a blind eye to abuse (which used to be common) but moreso these days to actively assist in it with a smile and a wink and a hand extended for the payoff, while simultaneously making a public show of "deep concern" and issuing press releases that say "We take the X problem seriously..." and participating in working groups that studiously avoid the actual problems -- or better yet, which invite well-known/long-time abusers to have a seat at the table. ---Rsk