What are your thoughts on.....

"Ben Jackson" wrote in message
news:RSR5c.27524$JL2.318706@attbi_s03...
The problem is that some people get so much spam that if they didn't
take drastic filtering measures they wouldn't get your email anyway --
they wouldn't have time to sift through the spam looking for it.

Did you read my post? I had my ISP *** DISABLE *** the black-hole list
functionality for my email account, and it produced NO CHANGE in the amount
of spam I receive.

Not only was it blocking legitimate email, it turned out it did not appear
to be blocking any spam that SpamAssassin (which my ISP also runs) wasn't
already catching.

Obviously it is possible to filter out spam without resorting to such
drastic measures.

Not really. 'Compromised' broadband users infected with viruses that
turn them into spam zombies should still be sending their legitimate
email through their ISP's server, which will not be on the DUL-style
lists I assume you are refering to.

You have no clue about what you're talking about. The reason that I had my
ISP disable the black-hole list was that domains such as aol.com,
comcast.com, and cox.net were being blocked. These are all "respectable"
ISPs who take a no-tolerance stance toward their users sending spam.

The same tool, by the way, was blocking another friend's email because he
was running his own email server behind a dynamic IP address. Yet another
inappropriately blocked, perfectly legitimate source of email.

Your claim that those sources of email "will not be on the DUL-style lists"
is just plain wrong.

There is plenty of collateral
damage from IP blocking, but the cause of those blocks is usually ISP
supported spam.

Baloney. I receive practically no email from anyone using an ISP that
supports spam. I doubt I know ANYONE who uses an ISP that supports spam.
And yet email sent to me was getting blocked on a regular basis, because
those spam-intolerant ISPs that my friends and family do use were still
getting blocked.

Do you really believe that Ben or his ISP at rrcnet.org have blocked the
optonline.net domain as a spamming network legitimately?

Pete

In article ,
Peter Duniho wrote:

You have no clue about what you're talking about. [...]

I don't know why you've decided to elevate this straight to "flamewar".
I agree that the fallout from spam (false positives especially) is
reaching unacceptable levels. Don't be so quick to condemn those who
have been burned by insufficient filtering who have resorted to stronger
measures. Just because you don't need them (on the scale of your own
personal inbox) doesn't mean they're useless.

There is plenty of collateral
damage from IP blocking, but the cause of those blocks is usually ISP
supported spam.

Baloney. I receive practically no email from anyone using an ISP that
supports spam.

How would you even know? And besides, I said "collateral damage". I'm
including the case where small ISPs have IP blocks that are near known
spammers and overzealous blackhole list admins hit them too.

Do you really believe that Ben or his ISP at rrcnet.org have blocked the
optonline.net domain as a spamming network legitimately?

That's a loaded question, you just spent the rest of your message ranting
about how the blocks are never legitimate. The server in question is
listed on 4 out of 31 blackhole lists at the moment. The policies of
at least a few of those require that actual spam come from the actual
server to one of their traps. I wouldn't use them at blacklists because
I find their policies too extreme. But then again I only process tens of
thousands of junk email messages a day, probably a few orders of magnitude
below a medium sized ISP.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

On 16 Mar 2004 17:12:58 -0800, (Ben) wrote:

Hello,
As a senior in high school, i was able to get my private pilot's
license on dec 31, 2003. i love flying(what pilot doesn't, right?)
but i'm looking for a cheaper way to build hours then renting. i was
just playing with an idea, and i wanted your responses. Would an
airplane owner ever offer to share operating expenses for payment to
share a plane? i know that i would have to be put on an insurance
plan, and i of course would pay for over half of the owners insurance
payement, plus whatever kind of costs for annuals and other
inspections. i know this is almost like co-ownership, but i don't
have the resources to be buying a plane. I'm not trying to ask for
something for nothing, as i've said, i'll pay for operating and
insurance costs, as agreed with an owner.

Go to the airport. Hang out. Help people. Make friends. There are
a lot of planes that sit idle that could use the 'exercise'. The
difficult part will be getting someone to trust you enough to accept
the risk of letting someone else fly their plane.

Where are you based?

-Nathan

Hey,
Sorry, don't know anything about my server blocking my
emails...but i added your domain to my safelist on my hotmail account,
so if you still really want to email me, you can. Of course, you
could always reply in the newsgroup too!
Benjamin

I tried to email you but your email system rejected my address:

Peter Duniho wrote:

You have no clue about what you're talking about. The reason that I had my
ISP disable the black-hole list was that domains such as aol.com,
comcast.com, and cox.net were being blocked. These are all "respectable"
ISPs who take a no-tolerance stance toward their users sending spam.

All three of those ARE spammers and are all very unresponsive in getting
their customers to clean up... Comcast is the worst of the bunch,
followed by Cox, and AOL is much better than it used to be... Every spam
or virus received from them, if forwarded back with a complaint and
the reason for it...

Baloney. I receive practically no email from anyone using an ISP that
supports spam. I doubt I know ANYONE who uses an ISP that supports spam.
And yet email sent to me was getting blocked on a regular basis, because
those spam-intolerant ISPs that my friends and family do use were still
getting blocked.

I guess you don't get any of those "419" money scams then...

Do you really believe that Ben or his ISP at rrcnet.org have blocked the
optonline.net domain as a spamming network legitimately?

I kneaux I have...

"Ben Jackson" wrote in message
news:XyT5c.28636$J05.189678@attbi_s01...
I don't know why you've decided to elevate this straight to "flamewar".

Because I have a very low tolerance of fools who insist on contradicting
what I say, even when they don't have a clue.

[...] Just because you don't need them (on the scale of your own
personal inbox) doesn't mean they're useless.

I never said they were useless. I said they didn't provide a benefit worthy
of the cost.

How would you even know? And besides, I said "collateral damage". I'm
including the case where small ISPs have IP blocks that are near known
spammers and overzealous blackhole list admins hit them too.

Again, have you even bothered to read my post? ISPs being blocked are not
just small ISPs with "IP blocks that are near known spammers". In fact, the
ones I've had the most trouble with are AOL, Comcast, and Cox; typically,
when they get blocked, it's a *sub-block* within their total allocated range
that is blocked. They are NOT being blocked as a result of being adjacent
to some spam-friendly ISP.

Do you really believe that Ben or his ISP at rrcnet.org have blocked the
optonline.net domain as a spamming network legitimately?

That's a loaded question, you just spent the rest of your message ranting
about how the blocks are never legitimate.

It's not a loaded question. It has everything to do with the post to which
you made your original, idiotic reply.

Pete

Peter Duniho wrote:

Again, have you even bothered to read my post? ISPs being blocked are not
just small ISPs with "IP blocks that are near known spammers". In fact, the
ones I've had the most trouble with are AOL, Comcast, and Cox; typically,
when they get blocked, it's a *sub-block* within their total allocated range
that is blocked. They are NOT being blocked as a result of being adjacent
to some spam-friendly ISP.

Blocking the dialup/cable/dsl modem pooled IP's of another ISP are the
necessary evils of being an ISP. You don't want to receive spam/virii
from their users computer acting as their own SMTP server...

Rooting out the true SMTP servers of each ISP (especially a stealth
spammer like E@rthlink or a proxy based one like A0L) is the tough part
of IP blocking. C0X and RR both use regional mail servers which make it
that much harder again. Anybody on Comc@st or @delphia, needs to get a
Hotmail or Yahoo email account...

Getting spam from adjacent blocks, just helps keep the filter file list
smaller, as they are added together...

In article ,
Peter Duniho wrote:
Because I have a very low tolerance of fools who insist on contradicting
what I say, even when they don't have a clue.

You know, after your last bit of frothing I looked at some of your
older usenet posts. You didn't used to be such a dick. What happened?

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
The same tool, by the way, was blocking another friend's email because he
was running his own email server behind a dynamic IP address. Yet another
inappropriately blocked, perfectly legitimate source of email.

No it is not inappropriate or legitimate. Your friend is an idiot and
should have known that running a mail server under a dynamic address
(probably by using a DNS service) is one of the surest ways of getting on a
blacklist or ten.

Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of mail servers should know this or know
ways of getting around it.

He shold pay the extra bucks for a static address like other "legitmate"
mail servers. If not, well, you get what you pay for.

Baloney. I receive practically no email from anyone using an ISP that
supports spam. I doubt I know ANYONE who uses an ISP that supports spam.

Hate to break it to you, Pete, but your own ISP is a fairly well-known
spammer. "They" don't actually spam, but they are a friendly host to
spammers. They are known to ignore spam complaints and not take appropriate
action on abuse reports. A quick Google on the NANAE Usenet group will
reveal all.

They are not alone, of course. Cox cable was blacklisted by many for the
longest time. Verizon, AOL, Level3, Roadrunner, Yahoo and many other very
well known and popular ISPs have been listed on the major blacklists at one
time or another. "Unfair" blacklists the only way to get these big
providers attention sometimes.

Do you really believe that Ben or his ISP at rrcnet.org have blocked the
optonline.net domain as a spamming network legitimately?

Why wouldn't they? When I (or my customers) get desperate enough, I will
also make use of a half dozen well known blacklists. Yeah, you might miss a
few legitimate emails but the alternative is a flooded mailbox and bandwidth
problems. It's a desperate measure and one that you do not adopt with
haste. But when all else fails and your small customer doesn't want to pay
the big bucks for decent filtering, you make do.

--
Jim Fisher

On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:35:28 GMT, "Soon_To_Fly"
wrote:

My domain is optonline.net, which is a major cable internet ISP. If you
block optonline.net then you stop email from millions of legitimate
addresses.

Otherwise known as SPAM. The only people I want to hear from in my inbox are

No, there has been great difficulty defining spam, but it is generally
accepted as UBE, or commercial stuff that has not been signed up for.
On thing it is not is simply unsolicited e-mail from the normal person
on use net.

my friends, family and those I have given permission to email me. I am not
trying to be arrogant, but I HATE unsolicited email with a passion.

Then don't post on newsgroups or be thoughtful enough to put a
statement in your sig to reply only on usenet and the reply address is
invalid.
Any one using that approach and posting on use net should at least
make such a statement in their sig.

The original post was of such a nature than many on here would tend to
give it a personal reply and it contains an address for replying. You
only have to remove the characters. Hence it provides a method of
replying directly and has nothing to do with your spam response. He
took a very good approach. That his ISP is out in left field is not
his fault.

My ISP decided to start filtering. The problem was they were
filtering on content and although many argue vehemently to the
contrary I have found that filtering on content gives too many false
positives. My wife and I both do a lot of on-line work and we depend
on e-mail. It used to be something on which we could depend and where
I worked was the same. (I was one of the sys admins). WE also do a
lot of business via e-mail so false positives can cost money.

Fortunately as a dot com I have enough authority on the web hosting I
can set the filters as I wish. So I set them to only tag spam and
viruses as junk mail. The mistakes that system makes is amazing, but
this way I just glance through the *stuff* and delete what I don't
want.

I can understand dumping some ISPs into a black hole that actively
host spammers, but the cable networks with millions of customers have
a tremendous job of eliminating the idiots who do not use any
protection on their computers and then end up and an open proxy or
relay for spammers. Remember that nearly all the viruses so far have
been of a nature that the user does it to them selves. It's not the OS
it's the users.

Some ISPs black hole any of the cable networks. I'd change ISPs in
that case.

One more thing. My address is "munged" but can be figured out. It is
not that way because of spam. In all the years on the net I've never
had a problem with spam and I've had a rather high profile. It is
that way because the average user doesn't practice safe computing. I
saw a figure on one of the news programs and I think one virus checker
uses it in an add, that something like half the computers hooked to
the internet have been infected by a virus or worm at one time or
another. My address is munged because I was receiving bounce messages
due to some one, or more likely several who had me in their address
books had opened that worm attachment going around. They only open
attachments from people they know. They never stop to think those are
the people who have them in their address books and that is the most
likely place for the virus to originate. They should black hole all
the ISPs sending out those bounce messages and the two worst are AOL
and Microsoft. (or they were)

I've taught this stuff at the university level and I can say with
great certainty that the average user is clueless. The people in
those classes were certainly above average, had to use computers on a
daily basis and over 90 % of them were clueless.

Having spent my professional carer in CS I have very little tolerance
for either the poorly designed spam filters, or ISPs who simply black
hole the large providers to the general public. OTOH I agree whole
heartedly with them for black holing the ISPs that support the
spammers.

Oh... The spammers have figured out that a user activated worm can be
designed to harvest e-mail addresses, so many of the computers
infected in the last 6 months have been doing two things. They have
been providing the spamers with millions of addresses that they could
not obtain otherwise AND they are installing trojans in those infected
computers to send spam for them. So we are finding that some of the
people who are vehemently against spam are the ones sending it and
they have no idea it's coming from them.

It's reaching the point where those with infected computers will have
their service terminated and only be allowed back on after they prove
their system is clean. That means paying the ISP to come out and check
it.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Richard

"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message
. net...
I tried to email you but your email system rejected my address:

Recipient address:
Reason: Server rejected MAIL FROM address.
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.0.0 porn spamming network
Remote system: dns;mail.rrcnet.org
(TCP|167.206.5.72|57474|209.105.74.131|25) (rrc2.rrcnet.org ESMTP Hello
from
rrcnet; Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:51:13 -0600)


Good luck.


"Ben" wrote in message
om...
Hello,
As a senior in high school, i was able to get my private pilot's
license on dec 31, 2003. i love flying(what pilot doesn't, right?)
but i'm looking for a cheaper way to build hours then renting. i was
just playing with an idea, and i wanted your responses. Would an
airplane owner ever offer to share operating expenses for payment to
share a plane? i know that i would have to be put on an insurance
plan, and i of course would pay for over half of the owners insurance
payement, plus whatever kind of costs for annuals and other
inspections. i know this is almost like co-ownership, but i don't
have the resources to be buying a plane. I'm not trying to ask for
something for nothing, as i've said, i'll pay for operating and
insurance costs, as agreed with an owner.

Well, how would you respond to this kind of proposal? let me know!

Thanks in advance,
Benjamin

If you want to email me....
#b#a#s#o#g#@#r#r#c#n#e#t#.#o#r#g#