I must have missed the signpost reading NANAE at the last curve, but while we're off topic... Previously, Christopher L. Morrow (christopher.morrow@mci.com) wrote:
I'd also point out someting that any provider will tell you: "Spammers never pay their bills." This is, in fact (for you nanae watchers), the reason that most of them get canceled by us FASTER... Sadly, non-payment is often a quicker and easier method to term a customer than 'abuse', less checks since there is no 'percieved revenue' :(
I've got to agree with Chris here... Spammers never pay their bills. I've heard for years about how NSPs were getting rich off of spam, but I've never seen one do it... What I have seen is spammers sign outrageous contracts for large volumes of bandwidth creating this fictional renenue stream that Chris refers to which makes it so difficult to term them. "Oh come on, they're paying $20k / mo., we can't just shut them off because of x complaints." (x = 3, 6, 20, 2000 ... depends on who you're talking to.) "Besides, they told me it's not really spam, it's all opt-in and the folks are just confused that they opted in at one point. They said they'll provide records..." yada yada. Of course, after being 30 days out on their bill, it was a heck of a lot easier to wave the abuse flag. Of course, most of us already know rule #1... spammers lie. Getting a commission based sales organization to understand that is another story. (I might add as a personal aside, managing the abuse team is the most unglamourous, dirty, annoying position anyone can have. Dealing with scumbag customers on one hand, fighting with executive on the other. Worst year of my life.) Previously, Dr. Jeffrey Race (jrace@attglobal.net) wrote:
This situation has been known for years and it is I repeat trivially easy to solve.
[Long process involving sharing customer information between potential competitors/downstream customers and their upstream providers, a database network to maintain, and a service agreement that provides for penalties that are unenforceable and highly unlikely to survive arbitration or a judicial hearing....]
Violation of such a contract is not just a civil matter resulting in penalties (charged against the credit card which affects the applicant's credit history). It is also the criminal offense of "fraud in the inducement" because the perp signed the agreement with the prior intention to violate it.
Therefore when your downstream terminates a perp, they enter him (by real name) in the system-wide database, collect the penalty, and file a police report and have him criminally prosecuted. If they refuse, you terminate the downstream.
*snicker* Is this the point where the pigs fly out of my fundament, or does that come later? Exactly who is going to carry out this prosecution... looks to me more like a dispute over a civil contract. Perhaps you can fund that legal action with the penalty you're going to collect.... oh wait, that credit card charge was contested. Hmmm, let's just be glad they went away.
Poof! MCI spam problem goes away in 30 days.
Except, said spammers re-incorporate in Florida under yet another name with some new cronies listed as officers and sign up for service from other unsuspecting customers downstream of AS701. Rinse. Repeat.
Chris--nothing personal. It's just business. These are the facts. Lots of companies have procedures like this in place which is why they don't have spam problems.
*laugh* Who, Jeffrey? I'll be interested to see how many large scale national and international NSPs have the procedures you describe in place... I mean, I'm sure the folks at Uncle Bob's Inturnet in Grove City, PA have time to research all 3 of their T1 customers. Most people on this list deal with a slightly larger scale of customer base... -doug