Re: [tlug] mail-abuse.org down

["SN_Diamond" <Norman.Diamond@example.com>]

"Christopher SEKIYA" <wileyc@example.com> wrote on
Sunday, March 17, 2002 4:10 PM:

> Sometime this morning, the ISC dropped off the face of the earth.  This is bad
> because they host mail-abuse.org's blacklist DNS servers.

They're up now, and they're accusing me of being equivalent to a spammer.
With friends like this, who needs enemies?

-=-=-
> From: "Norman Diamond" <ndiamond@example.com>
To: "Susan Tait" <stait@example.com>
Cc: <support@example.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: Your RBL nominations

To Susan Tait;
CC to support@example.com because Ms. Tait says that she has contacted you
about this matter:

Ms. Tait, you accuse me of "you have repeatedly ignored our requests to stop
sending us nominations that  include this kind of language and do not follow
our guidelines."

Your colleage sent a request ONCE and I replied ONCE.  If you or your
colleages had made a second request, I would have referred you or your
colleagues to the following article:
  http://www.nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/moren/163771
I searched for that one after writing back to your colleague, because I
thought he was going to ask for something to back up my assertion that I
write truth in my e-mail.  But he never did.

Now you are lying about me with your words "repeatedly" and "requests".
Would you mind telling me why?

You did proceed to a true statement though.  You say that an example of my
complaints to the senders and the web site hosts used by spammers is "not a
professional abuse report".  That is indeed true.  Your web site says your
operation charges for some of its services (I think it means that it charges
ISPs), and solicits donations from others.  I have done neither.  I pay for
connection time to download spams from my ISP, to send complaints to senders
and hosts, to download their complaints, and to send nominations to you.
Before working hours I abuse my employer's web connection to do whois
searches.  I do not get paid for any of this.  My complaints are indeed the
work of a rank amateur.

You also said that I made no attempt to educate, which is 90% true.  I used
to try to educate the operators of open relays, but you provide a simple
interface to report open relays and I no longer contact their operators at
all.  The senders and hosts are a different matter.  I think they know what
they are doing and I think that attempts to educate them result in increased
amounts of spams.

At the moment it seems very fortunate that amateur spamming victims have no
enemies.  When your operation is our friend, it is fortunate that we have no
enemies.

Yours sincerely,
Norman Diamond


Following is a copy of my message which your colleague did not reply to,
followed by your message.


----- Original Message -----
> From: <ndiamond@example.com>
To: <rbl@example.com>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 7:50 AM
Subject: Re: [MAPS #29912] (rbl) bellhosting.com

>
> Mike Paulsen via RT <rbl@example.com> wrote
>
> > There is a  vulnerable formmail script at:
> > http://iabcanada.com/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi
> >
> > Please notify iabcanada.com and bellhosting.com.
>
> My original submission included bounces from bellhosting.com.
> I do not understand how you expect me to notify them?
>
> > www.abuse.net recommends these addresses for bellhosting:
> > whois -h whois.abuse.net bellhosting.com ...
> > abuse@example.com (for bellhosting.com)
> > postmaster@example.com (for bellhosting.com)
> > abuse@example.com (for bellhosting.com)
>
> Maybe I start to understand, but postmaster@example.com
> was one of the addresses that bounced my attempt to complain
> to them.  I do not have much hope for any other Bell Canada
> administrative e-mail address.
>
> > Please refrain from making any claims of illegal behavior or consequences
> > such as jail in your abuse reports. We can not republish those reports on our
> > website and it may cause your nomination to be delayed or rejected.
>
> Sorry but no.  You post truth on your web site, I put truth in my
> e-mail.  Jail is a possible punishment for spams in Japan.
>
> Unfortunately the law still permits postage-due spamming under
> one condition, but I am not going to repeat the condition because
> there isn't really any advantage, and if this e-mail gets misdirected
> in any way then this paragraph already helps spammers too much.
>
> =====
>
> Incidentally when dialing up from home I disable any incoming
> e-mail larger than 40K, which is the reason I didn't get your
> message until now.  My ISP's web interface doesn't provide headers
> or decoding of attachments so it's not really a substitute for dial-up
> either.  Anyway the above is my delayed response to the text of your
> e-mail.  Sorry for the delay.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> Norman Diamond
>
>


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Tait" <stait@example.com>
To: <ndiamond@example.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 5:09 AM
Subject: Your RBL nominations

> Norman,
>
> MAPS cannot process nominations that include legal threats or
> accusations of criminal activity. For instance:
>
> "When you help send spams to Japan you only get to spend time in jail
> here,
> but if you're also helping to spam other countries then there are
> organizations who can help disconnect your spamming "service".  Do you
> want
> help in disconnecting?"
>
> This is not a professional abuse report, and there is no education
> attempt at all included in any of your nominations. I have already
> opened an investigation with att.ne.jp, and have been sending them
> updates as your nominations do not follow our guidelines and you have
> repeatedly ignored our requests to stop sending us nominations that
> include this kind of language and do not follow our guidelines.
> Ignoring our requests to stop sending us these nominations is
> equivalent to being a spammer and ignoring numerous abuse reports and
> requests for the spam to stop.
>
> At this point, any further nominations you submit will be closed, on
> site, if we find accusations of criminal activity included in them. We
> would appreciate if you would either follow our guidelines for
> nominations, or stop sending them.
>
> Thank you once again for your attention to this matter.
>
> --
> Susan Tait
> Manager, Online Operations
> MAPS LLC
> MAPS, RBL, RSS, DUL, and RBL+ are service marks of MAPS LLC.