Re: Abuse mail boxese (was Re: Lazy network operators)

[Steve Atkins <steve () blighty com>]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 11:49:36PM +0200, Raymond Dijkxhoorn wrote:
> > > Presumably the 6.8m figure is how many users click the 'spam' button in the AOL 
> > > mail client and not how many abuse complaints are sent in?
> >
> > Probably, yes.
> >
> > AOL isn't a huge source of abuse compared to most DSL/cable providers,
> > so probably aren't seeing a huge number of incoming legitimate abuse
> > complaints. Their users are a great source of complaints, via the
> > "this is spam" button, though, many of which are legitimate and most
> > of which are well targeted.
>
> But AOL is target of a lot of virusses and spam runs, and i must say, they 
> do a pretty good job with managing al of that. Compliments to Carl and his 
> team. They bring _fast_ responses and replys on SPAL-L and do a lot of 
> work to downsize the impact of new stuff.

Absolutely. That's one of the reasons that they're not a large source
of abuse, far smaller than you'd expect from the size of their
customer base. Their team is competent, well-equipped and (compared
with other places) well-funded.

Another reason is that they're not really an ISP, in the traditional
sense. They have far more visibility of and direct control over what
their users do, and the software their users run, than almost any
other ISP. That makes many things possible for them that would be
extremely difficult for a typical PPP provider.

Cheers,
  Steve
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