ISP Spam filtering (Re: [Dx4win] Registration still not received:)

Jeff Maass [email protected]
Fri, 7 Feb 2003 12:22:42 -0500


> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of NR1DX
> Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 08:55
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: ISP Spam filtering (Re: [Dx4win] Registration still not
> received:)
>
> At 08:35 AM 2/7/03 -0500, Pete Smith wrote:
> >At 07:18 AM 2/7/03 -0600, Bruce wrote:
> >
> >>I still see spots where people have received their email registration
> >>with 24 hours.  Mine has not shown up after 10 days.  What is going
> >>on???  My bank cleared the VISA transaction over 8 days ago!!
> >
> >Bruce, I presume your message will get the desired response from
> >Steve.  It sure sounds like a clerical error.  Keep in mind he's
> only one
> >guy, has a real job too, and has probably been swamped since the new
> >release went out.
> >
> >Another ominous possibility -- my ISP recently proudly announced that it
> >is "helping" me handle SPAM by filtering based on sites of origin.  No
> >info on how they choose those sites, but they said they stopped
> 43 percent
> >of all e-mail during a recent test.  43 percent!  I get a lot of
> SPAM, but
> >not that much.  It seemed likely to me that they are stopping
> some stuff I
> >want, so I opted out of the filtering.
>
> Pete
>
> My (former) ISP did the same thing, except they never bothered to tell me
> they were doing it, I lost two consulting contracts and as a result I
> changed ISP's and am suing the former one. This is a growing trend among
> ISP's because the Spam clogs up their server capacity (not because they
> "care" about you). While I think Spam and Phone solicitation should be
> outlawed it is not the place of the service providers to decide
> who you get
> email from. It amounts to the same thing as the phone company screening
> your calls
>

My Company recently fell victim to this as well.

An increasing number of ISPs are using sites like this one:
      http://relays.osirusoft.com

These sites take reports from anyone about any ISP relaying
spam (not necessarily the originating ISP),and blacklist the
IP address block of the relayer . Companys and ISPs who
have chosen to rely on this data then block **ALL** email
coming from the  blacklisted ISP.

You can check whether any IP address block has been
reported for blacklisting at:
      http://relays.osirusoft.com/cgi-bin/rbcheck.cgi

It will show the results from each of the 40+ sites that accumulate
such blacklists for the specified IP address. As an example,
one of these 40+ sites lists my ISP, which is Roadrunner! If
your ISP relies on that particular spam filter site for it's spam
filter, you will not be able to get email from me (or any Roadrunner
user)!

They argue that any server that is so insecure that it would relay
spam should be blocked. The ISP with the blocked server then
must submit itself for "security testing" to be removed from the
blacklist. They have automated tests to determine that security
measures have been put into place and to remove the IP address
from the blacklist ---- perhaps as much as seven days later!

A company with which mine has a working agreement recently
started using some of this spam filter software, and we were
unable to email our contacts there. Seems the ISP that hosted
our email service (note: not our company, or the specific block
of IP addresses we lease) had been reported by two people as
being "insecure".

73,
 Jeff Maass       [email protected]     Located near Columbus Ohio
         USPSA # L-1192       NROI/CRO    Amateur Radio K8ND
Maass' IPSC Resources:  http://home.columbus.rr.com/jmaass/index.html
Circleville USPSA/IPSC: http://home.columbus.rr.com/jmaass/pcsiipsc.htm