home bbs files messages ]

Just a sample of the Echomail archive

Cooperative anarchy at its finest, still active today. Darkrealms is the Zone 1 Hub.

   OS2      Fidonet International OS/2 Conference      3,371 messages   

[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]

   Message 1,351 of 3,371   
   Jonathan de Boyne Pollard to All   
   Re: formatting to FAT32   
   02 Apr 11 02:17:37   
   
   Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9   
   ies,comp.mail.misc   
   UTC)   
   comp.os.os2.utilities:153 comp.mail.misc:832   
   From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard    
      
   > To blacklist all 4 million customers of one of the top 3 ISPs in the    
   > UK does seem a little strange though.   
   >   
   Nah.  Choosing the blanket option happens quite often.  People think    
   that it creates incentive, for starters.  "Look, you're going to get 10    
   million customers complaining at you.  You'd better dance to my tune."     
   And even, just for the sake of exposition, buying M. Metz's naive and    
   inexperienced contention that the blacklisting is done as it is claimed    
   to be done, and no-one makes any errors, or does things for expediency,    
   or tries to hoodwink the UBM senders, it's fairly clear that this sort    
   of thing can happen often.  Consider.  Just *one* of those 10 million    
   customers happens to hit a honeypot mailbox, sending through Virgin    
   Media's SMTP Relay clients, and in response PenTeleData blacklists    
   Virgin Media's SMTP Relay client, as that was the source.  If that    
   customer were a genuine Unsolicited *Bulk* Mail sender, then of course    
   xe'd probably have sent more than one message to more than one honeypot,    
   that being the nature of *bulk* mail after all, and probably thereby    
   routed mail via several of Virgin Media's SMTP Relay clients, causing    
   them all to be blacklisted.  One bulk mail run, by one out of 10    
   million, and suddenly an entire ISP's SMTP Relay client bank is blacklisted.   
      
   But as I pointed out twice, the truth is unknown.  There's no reason to    
   suppose that the published model is the true model.  People aren't    
   obliged to tell everyone how they are blacklisting people, nor are they    
   obliged to stick to their own blacklisting rules.  Indeed, many people    
   would be most upset if they weren't allowed the freedom to blacklist as    
   they like, so that they can be flexible in the face of events, even    
   though they had a published set of rules.  And the people who are    
   already hoodwinking UBM senders with honeypot mailboxes would strongly    
   resist the idea that they had to be entirely transparent about what they    
   are doing, because, for starters, not telling people about the honeypots    
   is the main idea.   
      
   Frankly, as the innocent third parties clearly caught in the fallout, M.    
   Metz's professionally insulting presumptions notwithstanding, it's not    
   our business and not our fight.  Moreover, why should any of us give any    
   ISP the satisfaction of using us as clubs to bully our own ISP?  For    
   that is exactly what this "tell your postmaster" stuff is all about.  (I    
   am, in fact, my own postmaster, in the usual case.  As I said, I know my    
   way around SMTP.)  PenTeleData makes (it hopes) 10 million people's    
   lives every so slightly more difficult, and then tells them that they    
   should complain to Virgin Media about it.  It's using an ISP's customers    
   as pawns.  It may well be the only weapon available, the truth of which    
   claim is another discussion all in itself, but it doesn't mean that the    
   pawns are obliged either to like it or to cooperate.  It's not    
   PenTeleData that the pawns have a contract with, for one thing.  If    
   someone told you that xe was going to prevent you from talking to    
   another person because a third party that neither you even know had done    
   something completely unrelated to either of you, would you be inclined    
   to cooperation?  You'd probably ask why the heck the two of you are    
   being roped in at all.  It's a bizarre idea when presented in the world    
   of everyday discourse, but it's normal for the world of SMTP electronic    
   mail.   
      
   Again, as I said, welcome to the balkanization of SMTP mail.  If you    
   look around a bit, you'll see this happening all over.  Just looking at    
   PenTeleData one can find reported that it blacklisted GMail    
   (72.14.204.xxx) in 2007, Yahoo! (72.14.246.250) in 2007, Comcast    
   (76.96.30.48) in 2007, and Orange France (80.12.242.26) in 2009.  One    
   can find the same for many other ISPs.  There's a 2006-01-26 article by    
   Jack Schofield, computer editor of The Guardian, all about NTL    
   blacklisting a whole load of other ISPs, including TescoNET (the running    
   of which, as I recall, was outsourced to NTL itself at the time).  To    
   reiterate what I said at the start:  The blanket option happens quite    
   often.  Those of us with experience are long-since familiar with it and    
   the silly dances that ensue.  (-:   
      
      
   --- Internet Rex 2.31   
    * Origin: virginmedia.com (1:261/20.999)   

[   << oldest   |   < older   |   list   |   newer >   |   newest >>   ]


(c) 1994,  bbs@darkrealms.ca