...

Has anyone ever managed to open a dialogue with symantec (or comcast) about that fscked up proprietary RBL they are using?

We're on the verge of just giving up on comcast

I know Sender Verification Callback has its issues, but maybe it would make sense to only accept email from Comcast after verifying that they accept email from you?

Might be more effective than diplomacy in this case :)

I've taken the rather extreme approach of bouncing everything through Gmail first. Let's see them block Google. ;-) Tony

on Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 11:45:53AM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:

For example, Gmail doesn't include the originating IP address in its email which makes it even more difficult for spam filters to judge its reputation.

You misspelled "makes it a veritable haven for 419 scammers". -- hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2553 w: http://hesketh.com/ antispam news, solutions for sendmail, exim, postfix: http://enemieslist.com/ rambling, amusements, edifications and suchlike: http://interrupt-driven.com/

On Sep 1, 2006, at 6:33 PM, Brandon Galbraith wrote:

I never understood why Gmail didn't put an X-Originating-From header in mail sent out by web users.

Seconded! It may not be a requirement but the omission is certainly inconsistent with most web-based email services, particularly a popular one like Gmail. A lot of abuse ends at a dead-end because trying to deal with security/abuse @ gmail is a losing cause. -david

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

Because Comcast's tools are broken and when other mail admins or even their own customers call them on it, they're not even competent enough to understand the complaint and refuse to escalate?

I hate to say this, and get involved in the melee, but... Perhaps the problem is that for an average customer service employee there are 1000 calls about something meaningless and not-wrong and only 1 call about something truly wrong? So escalating every problem that seems even half baked isn't an option? Perhaps some of the comcast folks reading might take a better/harder look at their customer service tickets and do a 'better' job (note I'm not even half of a comcast customer so I'm not sure that there even IS a problem...) on this issue? In general blaming the first level tech for something isn't going to get anyone anywhere near a solution. Perhaps Sean's actually saying: "The right tool is to use another provider?" even though Steven's thought is that the 'other provider' is in the same boat of clue :(

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

Perhaps some of the comcast folks reading might take a better/harder look at their customer service tickets and do a 'better' job (note I'm not even half of a comcast customer so I'm not sure that there even IS a problem...) on this issue?

I am a Comcast customer. I'm typing this message over a Comcast line, although you won't find anything in this message header which shows that. No X-Originating-IP, no received line, nothing "mandatory" showing where I am today. Most ISPs support customer applications because they believe the more services customers use from the provider, the less likely customers will switch providers, not because its "mandatory" to have those applications. But there is no requirement to use your ISP's mail server or any other application from your ISP. Likewise there is no requirement for a ISP to offer any E-mail or Usenet, or FTP, or legal music downloads, or any other application to its customers. There isn't even a requirement for it to have any customer service. Few of the large free Email providers have any easy way to talk to any human about mail problems. So you don't even get the satisfaction of yelling at a first level tech about your frustrations.

In general blaming the first level tech for something isn't going to get anyone anywhere near a solution. Perhaps Sean's actually saying: "The right tool is to use another provider?" even though Steven's thought is that the 'other provider' is in the same boat of clue :(

Mail Service Providers have a wide variety of policies, service levels, delivery performance, etc. Searching Google for "free mail provider" returns over 500 hits. Yahoo directory lists over 100 free mail providers. There is hardly a "monopoly" or "duopoly" of mail service providers, although the big four or five mail providers sometimes try to throw their weight around. Yeah, I know he was joking but what would a "E-Mail Neutrality Law" do to mail providers? I happen to think the problem is with the bulk mail forwarding services that don't pre-filter mail. But that's just my opinion. I choose not to use unfiltered bulk mail forwarding services so I don't have those problems.

On Sep 6, 2006, at 5:11 PM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

...

Because Comcast's tools are broken and when other mail admins or even their own customers call them on it, they're not even competent enough to understand the complaint and refuse to escalate?

I hate to say this, and get involved in the melee, but... Perhaps the problem is that for an average customer service employee there are 1000 calls about something meaningless and not-wrong and only 1 call about something truly wrong? So escalating every problem that seems even half baked isn't an option?

Agreed. While working at a small ISP many years ago I used to make it a point to take a few first level support calls a week -- it gives you a new appreciation for the tech support people and helps you understand what really bothers your customers. I also used to get some of the other NEs to take a few calls a week -- understanding the pain it caused (and making customers into real people) cut down on the more intrusive "testing"[1]. It can also provide you with much entertainment -- for example, I used to get calls asking things like "Can I get the Internet in my house?". A few times I asked "Depends, how big is your house?", but no one ever got it... Or the little old lady who would call up every few days and say " Dearie, the internet is broken again, can you please reboot it?"... Warren [1] Where testing means "Eh, lets just reload it and see if the problem goes away"...

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, S. Ryan wrote:

Christopher L. Morrow wroteth on 9/6/2006 5:11 PM:

...

something truly wrong? So escalating every problem that seems even half baked isn't an option?

You're probably right. However, if someone called my place of employment (a small local ISP) and complained followed by quite a few others, I would at least escalate the issue so someone higher than me can check out logs, connectivity, etc.. things I don't have access too to make sure there isn't a problem.

What is unfortunate is the fact that this generally doesn't happen. You get lots of calls and Tier I does the obvious and it works and works on

I think you are doing 2 things here: 1) assuming that there is a local and flat (all in one place and within earshot) tier1 2) someone is correlating issues across all tier1 tickets in 'real time' (or near realtime even)

those others that call that the issue must be them and it's case closed and nothing gets escalated. It's even worse of the problem gets seemingly solved and the customer doesn't call back for quite a while.. gives the appearance all is well even though it truly is not.

Ask a credit card company about the number of sub 10$ fraudulent charges they get on a monthly basis across their customer base, they do nothing to stop it... in fact they don't track it (in most cases) because it's not federally reportable :( Unless someone has a ticketing system that tracks problems and allows you to correlate the events in near-realtime for 'problem caused by' there is no want to know when there is a mass problem :( Or atleast it's much harder to do that correlation :(

...

Perhaps some of the comcast folks reading might take a better/harder look at their customer service tickets and do a 'better' job (note I'm not even half of a comcast customer so I'm not sure that there even IS a problem...) on this issue?

Most ISP's could do a better job. The last ISP I worked at utilized RT for their support. I think a strong ticketing system and using that ticketing system to it's full potential would go a long way in getting

yes, agree, see above.

things solved faster as well as being able to see trends that could then get escalated without lots of pissed off people having to call and bitch whine and moan before escalation happens. You could easily see an issue with a properly setup ticketing system such as RT.

.. and someone actually monitoring that ticketting system :) don't forget the 'monitor the system part' because I would guarantee that comcast has some form of ticketting system (just using them since they are in the example/email here...)

...

In general blaming the first level tech for something isn't going to get anyone anywhere near a solution. Perhaps Sean's actually saying: "The right tool is to use another provider?" even though Steven's thought is that the 'other provider' is in the same boat of clue :(

... good point. It may not even be the techs fault on any tier level. It might be company policy, unfortunately.

yes :( try getting support for mci phone service apparently they stopped providing it a while ago :(

On 9/6/06, Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote:

Telling half my family members they have to go get Gmail so they can email the other half of my family members is ridiculous. Too bad Comcast has a monopoly (or, where a duopoly, the competition is just as incompetent) so they have no incentive to fix it.

I'm tired of this duopoly fiction. Cable modem providers are usually de facto monopolies, though some of them may use PPPoE or other methods of supporting wholesale service, but DSL is only a monopoly at the copper layer, not at the DSLAM layer in more than half of the US or at the IP layer in almost all of the US. Beyond that, there are a number of service providers that will accept VPN tunnels of various sorts so you can get service access independent of your ISP's policies. That doesn't mean, of course, that it isn't too much hassle for your relatives to want to do that just to avoid the limitations of Comcast, but they've got lots of options if they want them.