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more on A few words in defense of AOL
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:53:43 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> Date: March 20, 2006 3:44:01 PM EST To: Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins () gmail com> Cc: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] A few words in defense of AOL On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 02:49:35PM -0500, Richard Wiggins wrote:
A fair number of our users forward their mail to an AOL account. If theyset forwarding in this manner, it bypasses our spam filtering.
Why do you allow that to happen? I'm genuinely curious, because it seems to me that any of us who handleany mail bound anywhere should really be making our best effort to, ummm, detoxify it, before we pass it on. I can't understand why you would even
*consider* allowing such traffic to bypass filtering. (Surely by now the spammers are well aware of the fact that you do this, since they track deliverability rates via different channels.)
AOL's robotskeep a running count of what percent of incoming mail from a given domain appears to be spam. If the number exceeds the threshold, they block the IPaddress of the sender.
Actually, it's based on spam reported by AOL users, but the effect is the same: send enough spam to AOL from 1.2.3.4 and eventually they will stop accepting mail from 1.2.3.4.And that's eminently sensible. If it's coming from YOUR network, then it's YOUR spam. So make it stop. But don't insist that anyone else is required to put up with a steady spew because you can't or won't act -- they're not.
It's not that hard to put a cork in it. And part of "making it stop" can include assistance from AOL itself: they provide a free service that completes a feedback loop between their inbound SMTP servers and your network, thus giving you a good look at what's making it past your filters but being snagged by AOL. They also -- again, markedly unlike numerous other large operations -- answer their postmaster mail, so if there's some wacky situation that needs to be dealt with as a special case, you can talk it over with them. I don't see an AOL problem here. I see a problem with a network that knowingly emits spam, has failed to fix that problem, and is blaming an innocent third party which has finally, in desperate self-defense, decided to partially rescind your access privileges to its network. I would do -- I *have* done -- exactly the same thing. Oh, it's not my first choice -- my *first* choice would be that you fix your broken network -- but if my first choice isn't gonna happen Real Darn Fast, as it should, then I'm certainly not going to sit still for the abuse. ---Rsk ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on A few words in defense of AOL David Farber (Mar 20)