Blocking skynet.be

[Chris Hodges]

Tom Del Rosso wrote:

"Chris Hodges" <chrisjhodges@127.0.0.1> wrote in
message news:3EFF0ED5.1010606@127.0.0.1...

Lets block nntp-posting-host == AOL shall we?


AOL doesn't even have a NNTP server.

It doesn't need to. The nntp-posting-host of this message should be the
IP currently assigned to me by my ISP (80.192.one hundred and nine.27).

(Check to follow)

I could post via another ISP and would still get the same nntp-posting-host.


--
Chris
-----
Spamtrap in force: to email replace 127.0.0.1 with blueyonder.co.uk

 

[Chris Hodges]

Chris Hodges wrote:

The nntp-posting-host of this message should be the
IP currently assigned to me by my ISP (80.192.one hundred and nine.27).

(Check to follow)

It is.



--
Chris
-----
Spamtrap in force: to email replace 127.0.0.1 with blueyonder.co.uk

 

[daestrom]

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f011c14.6670861@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...

In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:


No. Spam is not free speech. Sending out large numbers of
unsolicited emails is abuse of the Internet.

So, where can I find an 'official' definition of what the Internet is
intended for and what is 'abuse'? I don't think such a document exists.
And if it did, it surely is out of date and not enforceable across govt
lines.

By that logic, third-class mail is an abuse of the postal service. And
billboards are an abuse of our roadways (even though they are on private
land). Where does it stop?

Road Runner deletes the accounts of those who send unsolicited
emails (regardless of whether there is illegal content), just like any
other ISP. If you don't believe it, try it... they might let you by
with a warning if you're clearly a regular user who has never spammed
before, but I have no doubt that repeated spamming will get your
account deleted. Is Road Runner restricting free speech?

Well I'm not about to start spamming, regardless. But RR certainly is
entitled to set their terms and conditions. Their residental accounts are
charged for just that, 'residential' type of use, not commercial. But
surely there *are* ISPs that do allow 'mass-mailings' (provided there is no
spoofing or attempt to hide or illegal activity)? They would probably cost
more since a 'mass-marketer' would use more of their resources. Or do we
define 'spam' to not include open, honest marketing?

Most areas of the USA have laws against putting signs (whether
advertising, religious, political or otherwise) on utility poles. Is
that "restricting someone's right of free speech?" I don't think so.

No, the poles are private property and the utility is entitled to set terms
and conditions including leasing space (they actually charge cable and phone
companies for the right to put their lines on the same poles). And often
they pay the local govt for the right to place them on the public
right-of-way on streets.

But this is no different than a commercial web site charging a fee of
advertisers and refusing to carry certain advertisements.

Maybe unsolicited advertising needs to be a paid-for type of service
where
the spammer pays a 'postage' to deliver it to mailboxes (much like
third-class mail in the postal service).

This has been discussed many times in antispam discussion groups.
The argument I've seen against this is that it just isn't feasible to
change over to a pay-per-email-sent system.

Well, you have me there. If I have to pay for my mailbox on a per email
basis, I certainly don't want it cluttered up with spam that *I* have to pay
for. And as long as email/usenet is free and open to public use, I don't
know how it could be fee-based either.

Sounds like restraint of trade and a free speech issue.

The main restraint would be telling an ISP that it is required by
law to block certain parts of the Internet.

Right. If an ISP is willing to allow 'commercial mailing' accounts, and
charges accordingly, then such a blocking/filtering would be a restraint of
commerce.

daestrom

 

[daestrom]

"Dennis M O'Connor" <dmoc@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:bdr170$b9i$1@node21.cwnet.roc.gblx.net...

"daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote ...
"Jim Thompson" <Jim-T@analog_innovations.com> wrote in message

But some spam, that isn't fraudulent nor violates local standards of
pornography, just unsolicited advertisements from businesses would also
be
affected. Doesn't this restrict their rights of free speech?

No. Just as with unsolicited faxes, which were outlawed
years ago, your right to free speech does not include the
right to use resources _I_ pay for to deliver your speech.

I'm familiar with the fax issue, but then where does telemarketing fit in?
You pay for your own telephone service? Or is telephone service, which is
flat-fee for incoming calls, exempt from the 'fax law'? If that's the case,
do you pay per email, or a flat ISP fee? If the spam doesn't increase your
fees from the ISP, then why is it like the 'fax law' instead of
telemarketing? I think a majority of folks in US are on a flat fee ISP by
now aren't they?

Now if you paid a fee for each byte, or each email, then yes, spam was
costing you direct money in fees. As it is, it is a nuisance and takes up
some people's time (how much depends on filters, no-spam software, how open
you are with your email address, etc...) And yes, some folks pay extra to
stop spam with software, just like others pay extra to have an unlisted
phone number. I don't think such a cost counts in this.

Of course, with the national 'do not call list' that just went up,
tele-marketing is changing so it may go that way. Some registry of
do-not-spam-email addresses?? Talk about a database ripe for abuses if it
were ever hacked!!!

"Free speech" doesn't mean you get to force other people
to pay for it, or to "hear" it: it means you can say what you
want at your own expense to anyone willing to listen.

Again, unless your email is per byte or per message, the spammer is *not*
forcing you to pay for it directly. Only through increased costs of
providing general internet service. And how in h___ do you separate out the
incremental cost due to spam, streaming video, audio, and all the other
'stuff' flying across the wire. Sounds quite a bit like the postal rates
going up because the post office is having to handle more and more junk
mail. We all pay increased postage even though most of us do not send junk
mail.

As far as forcing you to "hear" it, come on. You are no more "forced" to
read spam than you are to listen to a telemarketer or throw-out junk mail.

No, I don't spam any products personally or know anyone who does. And I too
would like to see @fdfh34.com quit spamming these newsgroups. If he/she
were a legitimate marketer of worthwhile 'stuff' they could buy lists of
interested customers, or put up a legitimate web site or some other method
to attract customers.

I just worry about the slippery slope of censorship in *any* form. And lets
face it, setting a few filters/rules and clicking delete to even 50-100
emails a day is hardly an incredible burden. Much like sorting out all the
credit-card offers and sending them to the shredder while looking for the
one bill/notice in my postal mail. Perhaps it is too high a price to pay
for our freedoms??

daestrom

 

[Ben Bradley]

In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f011c14.6670861@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...
In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:


No. Spam is not free speech. Sending out large numbers of
unsolicited emails is abuse of the Internet.

So, where can I find an 'official' definition of what the Internet is
intended for and what is 'abuse'?

Spammers send as many emails as they can in as short a time as they
can. If some ISP's server fills up with spam and all email to that ISP
bounces until it's cleared up, spammers don't care. Spammers abuse
email.

I don't think such a document exists.

There are RFC's such as these:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2505.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2635.txt

The first gets rather technical after sections 1.1 and 1.2, but the
second one goes into detail about how spam damages the Internet. If
you read at least the first third of rfc2635, you'll see it makes many
of the same arguments I do.

And if it did, it surely is out of date and not enforceable across govt
lines.

Very little on the net has ever been enforcable. If you send an
email and the recipient gets it, it's because many pieces of software,
not just yours and the recipient's email programs, adhere well enough
to voluntary technical standards for the message to be passed through.
If you read through the RFC's you see that the Internet was
designed as a cooperative endeavor. We can post in alt.feminism about
Zener diodes, and we can post Net-related social/political messages
all over the sci.electronics.* newsgroups (just what we're doing now)
and there's no one to stop us.

By that logic, third-class mail is an abuse of the postal service.

Those who send third-class mail pay for page layout or do it
themselves, buy and use their own paper and ink, then pay what the
postal service charges for third-class mail.

And
billboards are an abuse of our roadways (even though they are on private
land).

Some of them are. Yes, many areas regulate what can be put on
private land.

Where does it stop?

Road Runner deletes the accounts of those who send unsolicited
emails (regardless of whether there is illegal content), just like any
other ISP. If you don't believe it, try it... they might let you by
with a warning if you're clearly a regular user who has never spammed
before, but I have no doubt that repeated spamming will get your
account deleted. Is Road Runner restricting free speech?

Well I'm not about to start spamming, regardless.

That's a relief!

But RR certainly is
entitled to set their terms and conditions. Their residental accounts are
charged for just that, 'residential' type of use, not commercial.

I've seen where some ISP's specifically call dialup accounts
'residential', but I don't recall that Mindspring (or Earthlink after
merging with/taking over Mindspring) ever made that distinction. I
have no doubt I could send out thousands of emails a day with this
Mindspring account with no problem, provided the emails I send only go
to those who asked for them, and I stop sending email to someone when
asked to, etc.

But
surely there *are* ISPs that do allow 'mass-mailings' (provided there is no
spoofing or attempt to hide or illegal activity)?

Yes, AFAIK almost all do allow this, IF the recipients have asked
for the emails.
Many ISP have rate limiting/alarms if the systems sees you send
over, say, 100 emails a few minutes, because the vast majority of
email users don't send that many emails in that short of a time, and
it looks like something a spammer would do. Such a system might stop
you, and the ISP would call you and ask for an explanation. If you can
convince them you're legitimate, AND they don't get spam complaints
related to your emails, most ISP's don't have a problem with customers
sending email to a large number of addresses.

They would probably cost
more since a 'mass-marketer' would use more of their resources. Or do we
define 'spam' to not include open, honest marketing?

Honest, open marketing only sends email to those WHO HAVE ASKED for
it. THAT is the essential difference between spam and other email.
It has nothing to do with marketing/selling/advertising - it just
happens that the content of the vast majority of spam is advertising.
Spam could just as well be asking you to vote for Al Gore, or saying
how you will be free and happy if only you will turn your will and
life over to Bhuuda. What makes spam spam is that it is unsolicited.
Here is an example of open, honest marketing using email - you can
sign up for Powell's monthly email newsletter in which they announce
sales and such, and you can unsubscribe any time you choose to:
http://www.powells.com/contest.html

Most areas of the USA have laws against putting signs (whether
advertising, religious, political or otherwise) on utility poles. Is
that "restricting someone's right of free speech?" I don't think so.


No, the poles are private property and the utility is entitled to set terms
and conditions including leasing space (they actually charge cable and phone
companies for the right to put their lines on the same poles). And often
they pay the local govt for the right to place them on the public
right-of-way on streets.

ISTR that there are usually local laws against putting signs on
utility poles, but maybe I'm wrong.

But this is no different than a commercial web site charging a fee of
advertisers and refusing to carry certain advertisements.

The owner of a website can sell ads to whoever they choose. I don't
see the connection to spam.

Maybe unsolicited advertising needs to be a paid-for type of service
where
the spammer pays a 'postage' to deliver it to mailboxes (much like
third-class mail in the postal service).

This has been discussed many times in antispam discussion groups.
The argument I've seen against this is that it just isn't feasible to
change over to a pay-per-email-sent system.


Well, you have me there. If I have to pay for my mailbox on a per email
basis, I certainly don't want it cluttered up with spam that *I* have to pay
for. And as long as email/usenet is free and open to public use, I don't
know how it could be fee-based either.

Email is NOT free, it's "free with $19.95/month Internet access".
Usenet and web access are likewise "free" with whatever you pay to
connect to the Internet. Industry figures from a few years ago
estimated that about two dollars of that monthly fee is used to handle
the problems caused by spam. We DO pay for spam - it may not appear
that it costs anything because it is a hidden cost.

Sounds like restraint of trade and a free speech issue.

The main restraint would be telling an ISP that it is required by
law to block certain parts of the Internet.


Right. If an ISP is willing to allow 'commercial mailing' accounts,

You're confusing commercial with unsolicited. Spam is a problem of
unsolicited email, not of commercial email. Not all commercial email
is unsolicited (the Powells newsletter is such an example).
Not all spam is commercial, only about 99.999 percent of it (rough
approximation by me) is commercial. There really have been religious
and political spams.

If nothing else, PLEASE understand the distinction between
"commercial" and "unsolicited." There's nothing wrong with commercial
email [or email with any other kind of legitimate content], as long as
it is sent only to those who have asked for it.
The problem with "unsolicited" is that it can result in every email
address receiving hundreds of messages a day (limited mainly by how
much email servers can hold), and there's no way to "unsubscribe" from
it.

and
charges accordingly,

If spammers were charged for the bandwidth they use, most of them
would go bankrupt.

then such a blocking/filtering would be a restraint of
commerce.

This presumes that there's some 'right' for email to reach its
destination. ISP's may make a "reasonable effort" to handle email, and
that may include filtering undesirable sources that could overwhelm
the servers if not filtered. A customer-friendly ISP may allow each
customer to decide whether he or she wants the filters on, but if all
customers get filtered emails, the main recourse customers have is to
go to another ISP.
Email is a less-than-perfectly-reliable medium, and spam is by far
the largest contributor to its unreliability.

>daestrom

 

[DJ Delorie]

"daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> writes:

If that's the case, do you pay per email, or a flat ISP fee?

I pay a flat ISP fee. However, in my case, I am using 100% of the
available bandwidth and all of my CPU resources for work, so every
spam email I get means a little less of the other stuff isn't going to
happen.

 

[Jim DeClercq]

Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> writes:

: In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
: >
: >"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
: >news:3f011c14.6670861@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...
: >> In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
: >>
: >So, where can I find an 'official' definition of what the Internet is
: >intended for and what is 'abuse'?

There used to be some simple rules, which I disremember. I suspect Billy
knows them.

Sending the same message to the same person five or more times in a week,
or at least some length of time, was spam. Three times could happen from
spewing, but five was thought to be intentional.

Posting the same article to more than five UseNet groups was spam.

The problem, now, is that there are so many people doing something that is
not really spam, so the end result is ten messages from ten different
people, that your body part is too small or your printer is low on ink.

Each of those people may send you three slightly different versions of
each message, so they are not the same message, and the number could be
blamed on spewing, when a snoozing machine on the path wakes up again.

It would be fine if fewer people did this. It is the number of people now
doing it that is the problem.

And they can do it without any hint of fraud, which someone actually
hoping to sell you something would, and it would still be a bother,
because of the number of people doing it. None of them, individually, is
abusing the net. If it is a lot, the word is flooding. But each individual
is sending you three messages a week, and that is not abuse, or at least
did not use to be called abuse.

What can be done about that?

--
/"\ Jim DeClercq--jimd@panix.com--Sylvania, Ohio, USA
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus! |
X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature|
/ \ and postings | to help me spread! |
..

 

[Ben Bradley]

In
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic,
sci.electronics.cad,
sci.electronics.design,
sci.electronics.misc,
alt.primenet.recovery,
Jim DeClercq <jimd@panix1.panix.com> wrote:

Ben Bradley <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> writes:

: In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
:
: >"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
: >news:3f011c14.6670861@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...
: >> In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:
:
: >So, where can I find an 'official' definition of what the Internet is
: >intended for and what is 'abuse'?

There used to be some simple rules, which I disremember. I suspect Billy
knows them.

Sending the same message to the same person five or more times in a week,
or at least some length of time, was spam. Three times could happen from
spewing, but five was thought to be intentional.

Posting the same article to more than five UseNet groups was spam.

The problem, now, is that there are so many people doing something that is
not really spam,

Here I thought you were talking about things such as this thread
which is regrettably crossposted to five groups (I at first thought it
was more, but the groupnames are rather long, especially ABSE)...

so the end result is ten messages from ten different
people, that your body part is too small or your printer is low on ink.

If you're just going by the email address in the "From:" field,
you're being misled. Nowadays every copy of a spam has a different
forged address in the "From:" Look at the headers - chances are
overwhelming that spams with the same text come from the same IP
address.
I have several aliases - benbradley@mindspring.com,
ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com (yes, that one works AND it gets
spam), and I often get a copy of a spam to each address. The From:
addresses are different, but the Received: lines are usually
identical.

Each of those people may send you three slightly different versions of
each message, so they are not the same message, and the number could be
blamed on spewing, when a snoozing machine on the path wakes up again.

They don't have to be identical, if they are "substantially the
same" that's good enough for me (and most others) to say they are the
same. Almost always, the only differences between these messages are a
few [pseudo-] randomly generated characters or words. The spamware
program generates this with the SOLE reason to try to break through
ISP's spam filters.

It would be fine if fewer people did this. It is the number of people now
doing it that is the problem.

No, it's that people send unsolicited emails at all that is the
prioblem. One aspect of the problem is that you can't control whether
you get one per week, or two hundred per day.

And they can do it without any hint of fraud, which someone actually
hoping to sell you something would, and it would still be a bother,
because of the number of people doing it. None of them, individually, is
abusing the net. If it is a lot, the word is flooding. But each individual
is sending you three messages a week, and that is not abuse, or at least
did not use to be called abuse.

I really don't get what you're saying... it seems you're basing
this on seeing every spam you get having a different return address.
Those addresses (along with the personal-sounding subject lines) can
be randomly generated or inserted from a long list by the spamware.

Do a google search for "Email Blaster" or "Email Bulker" and check
out the features of the programs that spammers use to send spam.

What can be done about that?

I dunno, but I like your sig.

--
/"\ Jim DeClercq--jimd@panix.com--Sylvania, Ohio, USA
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | I'm a .signature virus! |
X against HTML mail | Copy me into your ~/.signature|
/ \ and postings | to help me spread! |
.

 

[daestrom]

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f024063.46285788@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...

In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:


I don't think such a document exists.

There are RFC's such as these:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2505.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2635.txt

Well, all due respect to the authors of RFC2635, but I don't think they have
any legal point (they even admit it is more of an ethical issue [pg 3]).
Unlike most RFC's that I've read (and that's a few), the front half of this
reads more like an op-ed piece than a formally crafted document describing a
protocol or standard. And the opinion the authors have is obvious from the
title. But yes, I took the time to read the whole thing, thanks for the
link.

They both state one of the major concerns is the real cost people pay for
connect time. While this may have been true in 1999, I wonder if it is
still true today. Many, many ISP's have flat rates now.

The claim that spammers are using other private equipment may be true, but
it is *no different* than telemarketing. An automated dialer playing a
voice recording to anyone who answers the phone is much the same as a mass
spamming. The telemarketer is using *my* phone, and my phone companies
central office. And most likely using a couple of long-lines that don't
belong to them either. This is another case of 'private' equipment that is
deliberately open to public use. How can the backbone providers get upset
if they voluntarily open their equipment for public use and the public
starts using it?

If telemarketing is allowed (although we all hate it), then what is
different from telemarketing and spam (if it is from a legitimate marketer
with legitimate headers)??

WRT the poor ISP whose open-relay mail server is crashed by a large volume
of spam, aren't they asking for it by being an open-relay?? Seems like that
is akin to putting your car on a city street with the doors open and the
keys in ignition, *and* posting a sign that says 'use me'. Open-relays are
sought out by spammers simply because they can find them and their free.
While it's true many spammers like them to hide their tracks, I'm more
concerned here about blocking all unsolicited email.

Now, I *don't* feel it is correct for a spammer to spoof reply-to, etc... to
point to some poor AOL account so they don't have to deal with the bounce
and "get me of your #$#@ mailing list" mail that is generated in response to
unwanted solicitations. But a *legitimate* marketer would want to be easily
contacted, and they are paying for their network connection. These folks
are the ones who can be likened to telemarketing. They are using common
resources that are available for public use. They would be censored if all
unsolicted email were outlawed.

And I feel that repeated advertisements of no relavance to newsgroups (such
as fdfh34) is bogus. I'm not trying to defend *that* in any way.

Those who send third-class mail pay for page layout or do it
themselves, buy and use their own paper and ink, then pay what the
postal service charges for third-class mail.

But the postal costs are spread over not just the marketer's fee. We all
pay increased postage for first-class mail when the post office has to raise
their rates. This is a case of marketers driving up the costs of mail for
the entire public. Isn't this the same as spammers using publicly open
internet backbone??

Email is NOT free, it's "free with $19.95/month Internet access".
Usenet and web access are likewise "free" with whatever you pay to
connect to the Internet. Industry figures from a few years ago
estimated that about two dollars of that monthly fee is used to handle
the problems caused by spam. We DO pay for spam - it may not appear
that it costs anything because it is a hidden cost.

And incoming telephone service is not free, it costs $24.95/month (or
whatever your rate is). But my point is that unsolicited mail doesn't
*increase* my costs directly. It only increases costs indirectly by adding
to the total bandwidth/mailbox-size. But I defy anyone to quantify this.

And if some people use the publicly accessable portions of the net to
transmit video and audio, they increase the bandwidth usage too. I don't
use these forms so for me the cost of this increased bandwidth is being
'forced' on me 'unsolicited'. I don't want it, but I'm paying my share in
increased ISP costs just like everyone else. I don't want to spam anyone,
but I'm paying my share in increased costs for this too. Why single out the
unsolicited marketer and not MSNBC.com that is multicasting to my ISP's
server for someone else to watch a (IMO worthless) video?

You're confusing commercial with unsolicited. Spam is a problem of
unsolicited email, not of commercial email. Not all commercial email
is unsolicited (the Powells newsletter is such an example).

No, I was using 'commercial' in the sense that an account setup specifically
for mass mailings. Not 'commercial' as in some business use for the normal
conduct of their trade. I'm specifically thinking of honest business owners
that are using unsolicited mail to market a legal, possibly desireable
product/service (for example, an internet mortgage company).

The problem with "unsolicited" is that it can result in every email
address receiving hundreds of messages a day (limited mainly by how
much email servers can hold), and there's no way to "unsubscribe" from
it.

Just like tele-marketers placing thousands upon thousands of phone calls a
day?? Telephone companies avoid a problem by not storing much from the
phone call or limiting the voice-mail box size. Some ISP's also limit the
individuals mailbox size.

The trouble with this idea is, 'how do I know if I want to receive your
email if I've never seen it?' The mass-marketer could normally pay for an
address list of people who've shown interest in similar products or belong
to a likely demographic. But if they use that to email me about a new
product, it *is* technically 'unsolicited', yet I may in fact be interested
in hearing about it. This great "information superhighway" would not be
able to connect us up if his 'unsolicited mailing' is outlawed.

If spammers were charged for the bandwidth they use, most of them
would go bankrupt.

But you have to decide 'which' bandwidth you mean. Obviously many of them
*do* pay for an internet connection that gives them the bandwidth to send
their mail at least to an SMTP server. As their mail diffuses to the
various recepiants, it fans out to smaller and smaller amounts. Sounds a
lot like telemarketer paying for a 'boiler room' full of watts lines (or
whatever they use these days) to reach out across america. Then it fans out
to long-lines and central offices that they are *not* paying, and finally
into my house onto the phone *I* bought from Wal-Mart.

I just don't see the difference between unsoliced email, telemarketers and
junk mail. Yes, unsolicited email amplifies the issue, but just because its
cheaper for the marketer, it should be outlawed??

Now, is unsolicited email really what takes up all the bandwidth on the
backbone? The RFC 2635 [pg 4] only says, "...numbers on the volume and rate
of increase of spam are not easy to find..." At most it seems like a
problem for sendmail and mailbox storage. Given hard disk technology, one
might argue that the amount of storage available for a given price has grown
as fast, or faster than unsolicited email

One of my pet arguments at work is the co-worker that listens to the 'radio'
over the internet. Although directed towards his machine, the multi-cast
broadcast affects everyone's bandwidth. Residential ISP's let this go on
all the time. They install more and more fiber and hardware to handle
things like this, yet we hear complaints that bandwidth is being chewed up
by ascii/hmtl spam. non-sequitor.

sigh... maybe it's just easy to blame something everyone hates ;-)

Email is a less-than-perfectly-reliable medium, and spam is by far
the largest contributor to its unreliability.

Well that's certainly true. I saw a story the other day about someone
trying to sue their ISP because they didn't receive an important email and
claim they suffered all sorts of damages. Don't people understand the terms
of use? H___, even the USPS claims no responsibility for lost snail-mail,
your only recourse with them is registered mail or insurance.

daestrom

 

[daestrom]

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f031ce2.17555908@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...

Here I thought you were talking about things such as this thread
which is regrettably crossposted to five groups (I at first thought it
was more, but the groupnames are rather long, especially ABSE)...

Good point. I'm reading from ABSE, so if you want, we could cut this down a
bit.

daestrom

 

[Ben Bradley]

In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f024063.46285788@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...
In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:


I don't think such a document exists.

There are RFC's such as these:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2505.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2635.txt


Well, all due respect to the authors of RFC2635, but I don't think they have
any legal point (they even admit it is more of an ethical issue [pg 3]).
Unlike most RFC's that I've read (and that's a few), the front half of this
reads more like an op-ed piece than a formally crafted document describing a
protocol or standard. And the opinion the authors have is obvious from the
title. But yes, I took the time to read the whole thing, thanks for the
link.

They both state one of the major concerns is the real cost people pay for
connect time. While this may have been true in 1999, I wonder if it is
still true today. Many, many ISP's have flat rates now.

The claim that spammers are using other private equipment may be true, but
it is *no different* than telemarketing. An automated dialer playing a
voice recording to anyone who answers the phone is much the same as a mass
spamming. The telemarketer is using *my* phone, and my phone companies
central office. And most likely using a couple of long-lines that don't
belong to them either. This is another case of 'private' equipment that is
deliberately open to public use. How can the backbone providers get upset
if they voluntarily open their equipment for public use and the public
starts using it?

If telemarketing is allowed (although we all hate it), then what is
different from telemarketing and spam (if it is from a legitimate marketer
with legitimate headers)??

One difference is in quantity. Telemarketing companies have to pay
live operators to talk on the phone. Telemarketing autodialers have
existed for at least 25 years. About 15 to 20 years ago many states in
the USA outlawed them, or at least required that a live operator
respond to an answered line with "We have this Really, Really
Important message for you. Please press 1 to hear it or 2 to hang up."
So the amount of telemarketing done is limited (though not nearly as
limited as we wish it were) by the need to have a live person talk at
every call.

WRT the poor ISP whose open-relay mail server is crashed by a large volume
of spam, aren't they asking for it by being an open-relay??

Yes, absolutely. It's my understanding that the 'open relay' used
to be a standard part of Internet email protocol, for now-obsolete
technical reasons. Though that's ancient history, there are still a
lot of open relays out there, and even a lot of currently shipped
software is configured as an open relay by default.
But there's also the problem of an ISP receiving a hugh volume of
spam in a short period of time (all addressed to its customers rather
than being relayed somewhere else), and its mail server gets filled
up, and at that point no one can receive ANY email until the problem
is cleared up. This has happened, people not receiving their email
because of a spam run, and it's been in the news. You could argue that
the ISP needs to scale its servers up large enough so this won't
happen, but how big should the disk space be? Five times the normal
volume of email? One hundred times?

Seems like that
is akin to putting your car on a city street with the doors open and the
keys in ignition, *and* posting a sign that says 'use me'. Open-relays are
sought out by spammers simply because they can find them and their free.

Yes, and there are many (millions?) of servers online, and many of
them run older software, or even newer software where the default is
to be an open relay. Configuration to disable this is not difficult,
and there's free documentation for doing this online (and if that's
not good enough, there are people on SPAM-L who will help), but most
ofteh the problem is that the operator doesn't know that it needs to
be done.
For the problem of relayed spam, once an open relay is detected, it
can be added to a list that you can use to block all messages from
that relay. Such a list operates at http://ordb.org/ and many
companies use such lists (their Who Is Using ORDB page lists Apple
Computer among many others).

While it's true many spammers like them to hide their tracks, I'm more
concerned here about blocking all unsolicited email.

I can see the interest in blocking, but I'm also interested in
stopping it to begin with. Blocking spam stops you from receiving it,
but it still travels along the Net backbone and takes up bandwidth
until it hits your filter.

Now, I *don't* feel it is correct for a spammer to spoof reply-to, etc... to
point to some poor AOL account so they don't have to deal with the bounce
and "get me of your #$#@ mailing list" mail that is generated in response to
unwanted solicitations.

Of course not...

But a *legitimate* marketer would want to be easily
contacted, and they are paying for their network connection. These folks
are the ones who can be likened to telemarketing. They are using common
resources that are available for public use. They would be censored if all
unsolicted email were outlawed.

So how many examples of "legitimate" marketers sending unsolicited
email have you seen? I've seen and heard of a (very) few. Usually one
of two things happens when they get a call from their ISP giving them
a second chance or their account/website they advertised is deleted:
They decide that sending unsolicited email is a bad idea and the never
do it again.
Or, they decide they SHOULD be allowed to send unsolicited email
regardless of what their ISP or anyone says, so they find
"bulletproof" hosting for their website, forge From: addresses, use
open relays, send spam using stolen AOL accounts, etc.

And I feel that repeated advertisements of no relavance to newsgroups (such
as fdfh34) is bogus. I'm not trying to defend *that* in any way.


Those who send third-class mail pay for page layout or do it
themselves, buy and use their own paper and ink, then pay what the
postal service charges for third-class mail.


But the postal costs are spread over not just the marketer's fee. We all
pay increased postage for first-class mail when the post office has to raise
their rates. This is a case of marketers driving up the costs of mail for
the entire public. Isn't this the same as spammers using publicly open
internet backbone??

Actually, the arguments I've heard are that bulk postal mail
actually subsidizes first-class mail, so that if there were no bulk
mail, first-class mail would cost more.

Email is NOT free, it's "free with $19.95/month Internet access".
Usenet and web access are likewise "free" with whatever you pay to
connect to the Internet. Industry figures from a few years ago
estimated that about two dollars of that monthly fee is used to handle
the problems caused by spam. We DO pay for spam - it may not appear
that it costs anything because it is a hidden cost.

And incoming telephone service is not free, it costs $24.95/month (or
whatever your rate is).

The more I read your messages, the more I want to outlaw
telemarketing... oh, BTW, as President Bush said the other day:
http://donotcall.gov

But my point is that unsolicited mail doesn't
*increase* my costs directly. It only increases costs indirectly by adding
to the total bandwidth/mailbox-size.

It also increases costs in that ISP's have to pay one or more
persons to work at abuse desks and handle complaints and reports of
spammers from the ISP, verifying the info, and deleting the spammers'
accounts. If spammers continue after the ISP has been notified of
them, the ISP may be added to blocking lists by other ISP's, and some
people won't be able to send you email.

But I defy anyone to quantify this.

It IS hard to quantify, but there are many indirect costs to spam.

And if some people use the publicly accessable portions of the net to
transmit video and audio, they increase the bandwidth usage too. I don't
use these forms so for me the cost of this increased bandwidth is being
'forced' on me 'unsolicited'. I don't want it, but I'm paying my share in
increased ISP costs just like everyone else. I don't want to spam anyone,
but I'm paying my share in increased costs for this too. Why single out the
unsolicited marketer and not MSNBC.com that is multicasting to my ISP's
server for someone else to watch a (IMO worthless) video?

You're confusing commercial with unsolicited. Spam is a problem of
unsolicited email, not of commercial email. Not all commercial email
is unsolicited (the Powells newsletter is such an example).

No, I was using 'commercial' in the sense that an account setup specifically
for mass mailings. Not 'commercial' as in some business use for the normal
conduct of their trade. I'm specifically thinking of honest business owners
that are using unsolicited mail to market a legal, possibly desireable
product/service (for example, an internet mortgage company).

While you're at it, you could think of honest preachers who have
important things they want to tell you about the Word of God, and then
there may be an email solicitation to vote for an, ahem, honest
politician...

The problem with "unsolicited" is that it can result in every email
address receiving hundreds of messages a day (limited mainly by how
much email servers can hold), and there's no way to "unsubscribe" from
it.

Just like tele-marketers placing thousands upon thousands of phone calls a
day??

Telemarketers would make tens of millions of calls a day if they
were allowed to use fully automated equipment.

Telephone companies avoid a problem by not storing much from the
phone call or limiting the voice-mail box size.

No, governments avoid the problem by requiring by law that a live
operator be on the other end of the line. Voice mail box size is not a
limiting factor, it is a problem in that it could fill up with
telemarketing messages, and people you WANT to hear from can't leave
you a message.

Some ISP's also limit the
individuals mailbox size.

Precisely, and if your mailbox fills up (with, let's say, spam),
anyone else who sends you email will get a bounce if it's sent after
the mailbox fills up but before you retrieve your email.

The trouble with this idea is, 'how do I know if I want to receive your
email if I've never seen it?' The mass-marketer could normally pay for an
address list of people who've shown interest in similar products or belong
to a likely demographic.

I know that I don't want to receive an unsolicited email, even if
it advertises a product I want to buy.
I want to buy new shoes. I want to buy tires for my car. I want to
buy toothpaste. I DO NOT want to receive email advertising these
things, and I will not buy anything in response to an unsolicited
email (the Boulder Pledge).
You may want to receive such emails, and below I describe how you
can do so. And if you do ask to receive them, then they're not
unsolicited, are they?

There are legitimate ways of sending to people who have asked for
emails containing targeted marketing information. ISTR that
postmasterdirect is a (mostly) legitimate organization that does this
sort of thing. See http://www.postmasterdirect.com

But if they use that to email me about a new
product, it *is* technically 'unsolicited', yet I may in fact be interested
in hearing about it. This great "information superhighway" would not be
able to connect us up if his 'unsolicited mailing' is outlawed.

Sure it would. He can buy banner ads on yahoo. He can put up a
website using the keywords about his product, and submit the website
to Yahoo, Google, and many other search engines.
Even more, he can have an area on his website for "Enter your email
address to receive sales flyers by email" [and have it go through a
confirmation process so no one can add someone else's email to the
list], and so you can get your email on the marketer's products.

If spammers were charged for the bandwidth they use, most of them
would go bankrupt.

But you have to decide 'which' bandwidth you mean. Obviously many of them
*do* pay for an internet connection that gives them the bandwidth to send
their mail at least to an SMTP server. As their mail diffuses to the
various recepiants, it fans out to smaller and smaller amounts.

Actually, the way an SMTP server works, you can send it hundreds
(the exact number varies with configuration) of addresses for the
"To:" "CC:" or "BCC:" fields, and ONE copy of the body of the message,
and tell it to send. So the output bandwidth of the abused open relay
is hundreds of times what the spammer is using to connect to the
internet.
I'm talking about the output bandwidth of the server.

Sounds a
lot like telemarketer paying for a 'boiler room' full of watts lines (or
whatever they use these days) to reach out across america. Then it fans out
to long-lines and central offices that they are *not* paying, and finally
into my house onto the phone *I* bought from Wal-Mart.

I just don't see the difference between unsoliced email, telemarketers and
junk mail. Yes, unsolicited email amplifies the issue, but just because its
cheaper for the marketer, it should be outlawed??

Now, is unsolicited email really what takes up all the bandwidth on the
backbone? The RFC 2635 [pg 4] only says, "...numbers on the volume and rate
of increase of spam are not easy to find..." At most it seems like a
problem for sendmail and mailbox storage. Given hard disk technology, one
might argue that the amount of storage available for a given price has grown
as fast, or faster than unsolicited email

Yes, as hardware gets cheaper, more of the money goes to paying the
salaries of those who do the upgrades to keep spam from overwhelming
the systems.

One of my pet arguments at work is the co-worker that listens to the 'radio'
over the internet. Although directed towards his machine, the multi-cast
broadcast affects everyone's bandwidth. Residential ISP's let this go on
all the time. They install more and more fiber and hardware to handle
things like this, yet we hear complaints that bandwidth is being chewed up
by ascii/hmtl spam. non-sequitor.

But the people getting the high-bandwidth net transmissions have
requested them, AND they can stop them at any time. You may be able to
block/filter the spam being sent to your inbox, but that doesn't stop
the bandwidth from being wasted.

sigh... maybe it's just easy to blame something everyone hates ;-)

Email is a less-than-perfectly-reliable medium, and spam is by far
the largest contributor to its unreliability.

Well that's certainly true. I saw a story the other day about someone
trying to sue their ISP because they didn't receive an important email and
claim they suffered all sorts of damages. Don't people understand the terms
of use? H___, even the USPS claims no responsibility for lost snail-mail,
your only recourse with them is registered mail or insurance.

daestrom

 

[daestrom]

"Ben Bradley" <ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3f03a363.51993849@newsgroups.bellsouth.net...

In sci.electronics.design, "daestrom" <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> wrote:

Well, we seem to have pretty much exhausted this discussion, just a couple

of final points.

If telemarketing is allowed (although we all hate it), then what is
different from telemarketing and spam (if it is from a legitimate
marketer
with legitimate headers)??

One difference is in quantity. Telemarketing companies have to pay
live operators to talk on the phone. Telemarketing autodialers have
existed for at least 25 years. About 15 to 20 years ago many states in
the USA outlawed them, or at least required that a live operator
respond to an answered line with "We have this Really, Really
Important message for you. Please press 1 to hear it or 2 to hang up."

Guess I disagree with you here. I have received numerous, completely
automated marketing messages. Phone rings, pick up, here a couple of
click-clicks, and a pre-recorded message starts in. The one I listened
*all* the way through asked me to then stay on the line for an operator to
take my order. One 'operator' can handle several hundred if not thousands
of phone calls an hour with this scheme (they only have to answer the
gullible ones that listen to the message through). They still have a 'live'
operator, but they get to make their recorded sales pitch to thousands of
people each shift.

So you're saying this is illegal in all 50 states?? Where do I file the
complaint ;-)

But the postal costs are spread over not just the marketer's fee. We all
pay increased postage for first-class mail when the post office has to
raise
their rates. This is a case of marketers driving up the costs of mail
for
the entire public. Isn't this the same as spammers using publicly open
internet backbone??

Actually, the arguments I've heard are that bulk postal mail
actually subsidizes first-class mail, so that if there were no bulk
mail, first-class mail would cost more.

That's a twist I hadn't heard of...

The more I read your messages, the more I want to outlaw
telemarketing... oh, BTW, as President Bush said the other day:
http://donotcall.gov

We've had a similar plan in NY for a few years. On the one hand, I'd say it
worked great. Very few business calls. On the other hand, I'd say it
simply shifted the issue. Since charities and political orgs. are still
allowed through, they now have a ready list of people to bother. I get more
unsolicited requests for donations from dubious charities than ever!!!
Seems like the scammers are trying to get your money by claiming to be a
'charity' for NYC fire-fighter or policeman benevolent society etc...

Hope that doesn't become a national trend (i.e. scam artists using donotcall
lists for targets and posing as charities).

I know that I don't want to receive an unsolicited email, even if
it advertises a product I want to buy.
I want to buy new shoes. I want to buy tires for my car. I want to
buy toothpaste. I DO NOT want to receive email advertising these
things, and I will not buy anything in response to an unsolicited
email (the Boulder Pledge).
You may want to receive such emails, and below I describe how you
can do so. And if you do ask to receive them, then they're not
unsolicited, are they?

Then why don't we do this with telemarketing and junk mail??? I have to
shread a couple of credit-card offers every day and it's a pain. Course, if
we did away this junk mail, I'd get no mail at all ('cept bills).

But I think *that* idea has been tried and shot down on
free-speech/restrain-of-trade grounds before. And that's just my whole
point. Although the technology is different, it still fundementally the
same thing. My mailbox gets full of junk mail just as bad as emailbox.

One of my pet arguments at work is the co-worker that listens to the
'radio'
over the internet. Although directed towards his machine, the multi-cast
broadcast affects everyone's bandwidth. Residential ISP's let this go on
all the time. They install more and more fiber and hardware to handle
things like this, yet we hear complaints that bandwidth is being chewed
up
by ascii/hmtl spam. non-sequitor.

But the people getting the high-bandwidth net transmissions have
requested them, AND they can stop them at any time. You may be able to
block/filter the spam being sent to your inbox, but that doesn't stop
the bandwidth from being wasted.

But the minority are using a lot more bandwidth than the majority, while we
all pay (approximately) the same fee. And we all suffer through this
silently, yet the minority emailer is a different matter and should be
banned??

Anyway, those are just one man's opinions/thoughts

daestrom

 

daestrom <daestrom@twcny.rr.com> writes:

So, where can I find an 'official' definition of what the Internet is
intended for and what is 'abuse'? I don't think such a document exists.

No plenty of them have existed and many continue to exist today. These
documents are called Acceptable Use Policies" and "Terms Of Service" and
so forth.

By that logic, third-class mail is an abuse of the postal service. And
billboards are an abuse of our roadways (even though they are on private
land). Where does it stop?

You should undertake some formal study of logic - that's where the answers
to all your questions lie.

Billy Y..

 

Jim DeClercq <jimd@panix1.panix.com> writes:

There used to be some simple rules, which I disremember. I suspect Billy
knows them.

The simple rule was an offending network would be disconnected.
An intentionally offending network would stay disconnected.

Mail was once nothing much but system crackers have been around
a very long time.

Billy Y..