URGENT: Operational Integrity Problem with IQ-INTERNET.COM

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

In our previous episode, Howard C. Berkowitz was heard to say:

FYI, I have received several spams from this source in the last few days,
and have sent complaints to appropriate abuse/postmaster accounts at
providers including Sprint. The question in my mind is increasingly not
what is in the source client's mind, but whether the traffic is violating
Sprint's usage policies.

Anyone else been receiving abuse from this source?

iq-internet.com / net is Jeff "Spam King" Slaton's latest
scheme. Sprint has said several times that they are
"re-working" their spam policy, and that a new, improved
policy would be availible Real Soon Now, and might even
be enforced.

Robbie

2

This has little or nothing to do with any "spam" policy.

If a site completely blocks email traffic from another site, and that
site many hours (over a day) after being reliably informed of this and
asked to stop continues to send thousands of messages all falling into
a rathole, then that is not spam, that is software out of control, an
operational problem. To deduce otherwise simply because the source is
a known spammer is pure mind-reading as to intent.

How can a person claim they are merely exercising some right as a
"spammer" when ALL THEIR MAIL IS BEING TOSSED ON THE FLOOR WITH
ERRORS? That's not spamming, any more than hitting yourself on the
head with a bat is baseball.

Sprint can certainly, if they cared, verify that thousands of messages
were being bounced unconditionally yet the other site continued
running one or more software loops sending messages.

To me this is not much different than creating a broadcast storm etc.,
someone is asleep at the wheel or malicious, to the point that it
justified intervention by a vendor as a purely operational problem, no
matter what the "rea mens" (legal term for "state of mind" or
"motivation") of the source of the problem is.

As a culture we're getting way too sucked into this "oh woe there's
nothing we can do" mentality, to the point of acting completely
impotent even in the face of actually rather easy to fix
problems. These spammers have created a state of panic and confusion
in some people, listen to yourselves!

Look, if someone sends packets at you at a fairly high rate,
regardless of the contents, and you have asked it be stopped at the
source, and they don't, and you have gone so far as to block its very
purpose and return an error msg on each and every logical transaction
attempt, and yet they still come, THAT IS AN OPERATIONAL/TECHNICAL
PROBLEM and justifies third-party intervention.

Let's stop being so damned morally confused. One message in my mailbox
is spam, thousands of messages being refused for 48+ hours, non-stop,
is an operational/technical incident, no one is seeing or cares about
the content, it's just an out of control software process which needs
to be treated as such, and stopped.

QED.

3

Are you saying that Sprint's router's or Sprint's customer's CPU has the
operational problem? If it is the former then obviously Sprint should
do something about it. But it seems to me that the problem is that this site
is Spamming and that mostlikely falls under SAPrint's policies about
Spamming. I don't see how it is a technical or operational problem involving
all of Sprint's Network services. Perhapse you should contact the operators
of the supposed run amok sendmail and lean directly on them to stop sending
you packets. You can allways put a filter in your router to block
traffic from that host. Or maybe you should ask Sprint to apply the filter
on their side of you DSx pipe.

          G

4

As I said, sending thousands of messages into a rathole after being
informed is not spamming, it's an operational problem.

Stop trying to play the devil's advocate and consider simply what is
right and what is wrong.

Sending thousands of bouncing msgs for 48+ hours after being told
repeatedly what's going on (or attempts thereto) is not "spam", it's
simply a process out of control, whatever the original intent might
have been.

5

As I said, sending thousands of messages into a rathole after being
informed is not spamming, it's an operational problem.

Sorta like what you're doing to the list right now eh? I think we've all
heard your point and made a concious decision as to its being right or
wrong. Fine, dandy, now shut about it already, bitching to NANOG about what
sprint is/isn't doing about it isn't going to make a difference that I can
tell. In fact its most likely going to make your posistion even more
problematic by annoying and basically angering folks who would otherwise be
willing to help you.

Sending thousands of bouncing msgs for 48+ hours after being told
repeatedly what's going on (or attempts thereto) is not "spam", it's
simply a process out of control, whatever the original intent might
have been.

Be that as it may, your consistent bitching and whining isn't going to solve
the situation. Have you tried the word I've learned to live by? its this
word call 'ESCALATION', talking to some front line techie at sprint isn't
going to solve the issue, bitching about the front line techie isn't going
to solve the issue. Escalating until you get to someone who can take care of
the situation (without being an ass about it) just might do the trick
though.

[-] Brett L. Hawn (blh @ nol dot net) [-]
[-] Networks On-Line - Houston, Texas [-]
[-] 713-467-7100 [-]