SORBS?!
Robert Bonomi
bonomi at mail.r-bonomi.com
Fri Apr 6 21:49:17 UTC 2012
Jimmy Hess wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:48 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
> > If it was industry-wide standard practice that just notifying a provider
> > resulted in something being done, we'd not need things like Senderbase,
> > which is after all basically a list of people who don't take action
> > when notified...
> >
> [snip]
> Pot calling the kettle black. Before we talk about industry-wide
> practice about the providers "doing something". We should talk about
> industry-wide practice for "Black lists" doing something to correct
> entries, instead of just building up indiscriminate or irresponsibly
> maintained lists of networks or "scores" of networks that were
> targetted by a spammer at one time in the past.
Sorry, but blocklists _came_into_existance_ ONLY because of large numbers
of providers *ignoring* the problems their networks were causing the
rest of the world.
The very existance of 'widely used' blocklists is a damning indictment of
the entire services provider industry. _Everybody_, including the major
blocklist operators, would prefer that blocklists were _not_ needed -- that
all providers would simply 'do the right thing', and insure that their users
did =not= abuse other people's systems.
Were that pipe-dream to come to pass, the major blocklists would *happily*
shut down. They are all 'money sinks', operating at a loss, 'for the good
of the community as a whole'.
Before blocklists. 'policing your own network' was a pure expense item
with no return. _Not_ policing one's own users *added* to profitability.
There was no 'business incentive' to be a "good neighbor".
With the advent of blocklists, providers have an 'economic self interest'
justification in remaining out of the major/widely used ones. It is still
an expense item, but "not doing anything" costs _more_ in 'lost revenues'.
It is a sad comment on the state of affairs that _all_ the major providers
have repeatedly demonstrated they simply "cannot be trusted to 'do the right
thing'" *without* a loaded gun held to their heads -- but that *is* the
reality of today's marketplace.
Today, for any of the major spam-based blocklists, a single entry consisting
of more than a single address is indiicative of a _failure_ of a provider's
self-policing. It is the height of hubris for a provider to 'demand' (or
even 'expect') prompt/immediate response from a blocklist, *when* the
provider 'demonstrably' couldn't be bothered to act that way themselves.
(What's 'sauce for the goose' _is_ sauce for the gander. :) IF the provider
had been actively self-policing, the blocklist entry would not have been
escalalated to larger than the single offending address.
Yes, it would be "nice" if everybody responded promptly; but, in the real
world, that simply doesn't happen -- on either side of the fence. I
once got an ack about a spam complaint *over*five*months* after sending it.
(For 'some strange reason', that provider is no longer in business. Thank
goodness!
> It's just as bad for a blacklist operator to not respond and "do
> something" for a network operator legitimately trying to resolve spam
> problems with their network and clear the listing as it is for a
> network abuse contact to not respond to a network operator.
This is provably not true.
There is no recourse/remedy for an unresponsive network operator. The
'network abuse' ccontinues to flow, _unabated_, from that network.
A blocklist, on the other hand, tends to be self-regulating. If it is
not responsive to changing conitions, especially the 'cleaning' of formerly
'bad reputation' addresses/blocks, it generates an 'unacceptably high'
number -- as determined by it's USERS, not the senders -- of 'false positive'
evaluations, *wherepon* increasing numbers of users =stop= using that
service. Resulting in an automatic _lessening_ of the impact of being
listed on that blocklist.
See the APEWS list for a 'textbook' demonstration of this self-regulation
in action.
> We should talk about industry-wide practices for how providers should
> be notified, what providers are actually supposed to do to "authenticate
> reports", because > sometimes the report/notification itself is
> malicious or false abusive attempt to harass an innocent email user,
> and what exactly providers are actually expected to do with certain kinds
> of notification.
>
> The informal standard of "just call or send an e-mail to an abuse
> contact" is poorly specified. The informal standard of "the abuse
> contact should investigate and take immediate action" is poorly
> specified.
>
> Some of these things that are not specified by RFC should be specified
> by RFC as best practice. There should be abuse notification and response
> notification mechanisms other than free form e-mail.
It would appear that you are not familiar with RFC 5965.
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