Re: Paul's Mailfrom (Was: IETF SMTP Working Group Proposal at
If this function of your ISP costs less than 1 FTE per 10,000 dialups or 1,000 T1's or 100 T3's, then your ISP is a slacker and probably a magnet for professional spammers as well.
... you're offering very definitive figures/labeling, and I'm curious as to what you are basing your calculations/labels on, and what the linearity of the scaling is in your opinion.
Your own experience at MAPS? At MFN? Wishful thinking?
those numbers are very round. i've seen folks do 1 FTE per 50,000 dialup users and get away with it, but that person was VERY busy. that ratio only works if the rest of the system is designed to repel the professional spammers, i.e., full ANI with filtering, full verification of credit cards (charge and refund before opening the account), nonrefundable deposit if terminated for spamming, and instant termination even at 4AM on sunday morning, ~30 hours or more before the account manager or any other manager could give approval.
Personally, I'd much rather try to justify a FTE for 1000 T-1s than I would for 10,000 dialup users.
like i said, the numbers were very round. as long as you understand that there IS a ratio and that the cost of dealing with outbound traffic does not end at the demarc point where it's handed to a peer or transit, then what the actual nonzero "abuse desk" costs actually are is a detail. this seems like something isp/c or cix should do a survey on.
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Paul Vixie wrote:
If this function of your ISP costs less than 1 FTE per 10,000 dialups or 1,000 T1's or 100 T3's, then your ISP is a slacker and probably a magnet for professional spammers as well.
... you're offering very definitive figures/labeling, and I'm curious as to what you are basing your calculations/labels on, and what the linearity of the scaling is in your opinion.
Your own experience at MAPS? At MFN? Wishful thinking?
those numbers are very round. i've seen folks do 1 FTE per 50,000 dialup users and get away with it, but that person was VERY busy. that ratio only works if the rest of the system is designed to repel the professional spammers, i.e., full ANI with filtering, full verification of credit cards (charge and refund before opening the account), nonrefundable deposit if terminated for spamming, and instant termination even at 4AM on sunday morning, ~30 hours or more before the account manager or any other manager could give approval.
All good additions, thanks for the clarification.
Personally, I'd much rather try to justify a FTE for 1000 T-1s than I would for 10,000 dialup users.
like i said, the numbers were very round. as long as you understand that there IS a ratio and that the cost of dealing with outbound traffic does not end at the demarc point where it's handed to a peer or transit, then what the actual nonzero "abuse desk" costs actually are is a detail.
this seems like something isp/c or cix should do a survey on.
Unfortunately, both organizations seem to be defunct for all intents and purposes, much to my disappointment. The only *active* independent ISP organization I'm aware of is the American ISP Association (http://www.americanisps.com) (disclaimer I know very little about this organization, and it's obviously U.S.-centric.) Perhaps the Spamcon Foundation(http://www.spamcon.org) would be well-suited to this task... /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Patrick Greenwell Asking the wrong questions is the leading cause of wrong answers \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 03:43:42 +0000, Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> writes:
dialup users and get away with it, but that person was VERY busy. that ratio only works if the rest of the system is designed to repel the professional spammers, [[SNIP]], and instant termination even at 4AM on sunday morning, ~30 hours or more before the account manager or any other manager could give approval.
Careful here.... I don't know if the rest of you saw this.. But Edward Felton (computer science faculty at Princeton University) had his site blackholed for *three* days because of overzealousness on the parts of spamcop and his ISP in responding to a mistaken spamcop complaint. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.19.html#subj7 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.21.html#subj4 There must be a balance. Mistakes happen. How overzealous do you want ISP's to be be at shutting off spam sites or accounts? Some might consider the costs of mistakes acceptable, but are they the majority? Or a minority? If such a system is created, how will this new system be abused, when an innocent misunderstanding and a single message took down a site created by princeton faculty member for 3 DAYS This was an accident.... How fast will someone's site go down if someone doesn't like them? Given this, who on the list would want to be a customer of any ISP with behavior like Felton's? Scott ** Keystone SpamKops "Edward W. Felten" <felten@CS.Princeton.EDU> Fri, 16 Aug 2002 09:45:06 -0400 I recently set up a web site at www.freedom-to-tinker.com. It's a weblog containing my commentary on various issues. Earlier this week, my ISP shut off the site, because the site had appeared on a list of "spammers" published by an outfit called SpamCop. Apparently, this happened because one person, whose identity I was not allowed to learn, had sent SpamCop an accusation saying that he had received an unwanted e-mail message, which I was not allowed to see, that did not come from me but that did mention my web site. On that "evidence" SpamCop declared me guilty of spamming and decreed that my site should be shut down. Never mind that I had never sent a single e-mail message from the site. Never mind that my site was not selling anything. Naturally, I was not allowed to see the accusation, or to learn who had submitted it, or to rebut it, or even to communicate with an actual human being at SpamCop. You see, they're not interested in listening to complaints from spammers. With help from my ISP, I eventually learned that the offending message was sent on a legitimate mailing list, and that the person who had complained was indeed subscribed to that list, and had erroneously reported the message as unsolicited. Ironically, the offending message was sent by someone who liked my site and wanted to recommend it to others. Everybody involved (me, my ISP, the person who filed the complaint, and the author of the message) agreed that the report was an error, and we all told this to SpamCop. Naturally, SpamCop failed to respond and continued to block the site. Why did my ISP shut me down? According to the ISP, SpamCop's policy is to put all of the ISP's accounts on the block list if the ISP does not shut down the accused party's site. Note the similarities to the worst type of Stalinist "justice" system: conviction is based on a single anonymous complaint; conviction is based not on anything the accused did but on favorable comments about him by the "wrong" people; the evidence is withheld from the accused; there is no procedure for challenging erroneous or malicious accusations; and others are punished based on mere proximity to the accused (leading to shunning of the accused, even if he is clearly innocent). Note also that the "evidence" against me consisted only of a single unsigned e-mail message which would have been trivial for anyone to forge. Thus SpamCop provides an easy denial of service attack against a web site. The only bright spot in this picture is that our real justice system allows lawsuits to be filed against guys like SpamCop for libel and/or defamation. My guess is that eventually somebody will do that and put SpamCop out of business.
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.19.html#subj7 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.21.html#subj4
There must be a balance. Mistakes happen. How overzealous do you want ISP's to be be at shutting off spam sites or accounts? Some might consider the costs of mistakes acceptable, but are they the majority? Or a minority?
zeal must become the norm. there are too many legitimate sources of error to make any loose assumptions about probable illegitimacy when faced with a report. under a "high zeal" regime, errors will be made until training and policy and toolworks all catches up to the need. -- Paul Vixie
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Paul Vixie -
Scott A Crosby