Praise to XO's Security/Abuse

Sat Aug 31 09:51:19 UTC 2002

On 02:14 AM 8/31/02, Simon Lyall wrote:

 >At least with RFC-ignorant you know who to contact

Since rfc-ignorant *uses* rfc-ignorant, I can't directly contact him/them 
(as the bounce below shows).  I refuse to jump thru hoops to inform them of 
the errors of their ways.  If they want to play games pretending that a 
large ISP with an efficient and responsive abuse desk somehow doesn't get 
abuse email addressed to one of their many domains, they can stick their 
head(s) in the sand and pretend.  It doesn't mean I have to silently go 
along with it.

Derek, please don't send me private email unless you are going to accept 
replies from the address you are sending to (see bounce, below).  Sending, 
but refusing replies, that's rude.

Note on cnchost:

When we launched this service (I worked for Concentric and was the product 
manager for this service during its development and beta in 1996, and 
launch in 1997), we offered customers the option of a default mailbox for 
anyone at theirdomain (with additional restricted mailboxes as desired), or 
restricting their mailboxes where only email addressed to actual usernames 
was delivered, all other email bounces.  However, an exception was made for 
the role accounts of abuse, postmaster, and webmaster.  If the customer 
creates user accounts with those names, email is delivered to the 
appropriate email box.  If the customer does not create these accounts, and 
elects to only receive email addressed to the customer's named accounts, 
email addressed to postmaster, abuse, and webmaster is still delivered to 
the primary user account for that domain (while other "non-existant" 
usernames will still bounce).  We did this in 1996, years before 
rfc-ignorant thought up their listing idea, and when other webhosts were 
allowing these role accounts to bounce, or hijacking (and then badly 
handling) all email to those usernames for every hosted domain (no matter 
what the domain name was) due to less configurable virtual hosting 
schemes.  So the idea that someone believes that cnchost is "rfc-ignorant" 
REALLY rubs me the wrong way.

jc

 >From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON at tonnant.cnchost.com>
 >Subject: Returned mail: User unknown
 >Message-ID: <200208310927.FAA08746 at tonnant.cnchost.com>
 >Errors-To: <MAILER-DAEMON at tonnant.cnchost.com>
 >To: <jcdill at vo.cnchost.com>
 >Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)
 >X-UIDL: 30537
 >
 >The original message was received at Sat, 31 Aug 2002 05:27:57 -0400 (EDT)
 >from adsl-208-201-244-240.sonic.net [208.201.244.240]
 >
 >   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
 ><dredd at megacity.org>
 >
 >   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
 >... while talking to mail.megacity.org.:
 >>>> RCPT To:<dredd at megacity.org>
 ><<< 550 5.7.1 <dredd at megacity.org>... Message rejected because the
 >connecting host (tonnant.concentric.net) does not have abuse contact - see
 >www.rfc-ignorant.org
 >550 <dredd at megacity.org>... User unknown
 >
 >   ----- Original message follows -----
 >
 >Return-Path: <jcdill at vo.cnchost.com>
 >Received: from Erwin.vo.cnchost.com (adsl-208-201-244-240.sonic.net
 >[208.201.244.240])
 >	by tonnant.cnchost.com
 >	id FAA08735; Sat, 31 Aug 2002 05:27:57 -0400 (EDT)
 >	[ConcentricHost SMTP Relay 1.14]
 >Errors-To: <jcdill at vo.cnchost.com>
 >Message-Id: <5.0.0.25.2.20020831022838.040be1f0 at pop3.vo.cnchost.com>
 >X-Sender: jcdill%vo.cnchost.com at pop3.vo.cnchost.com
 >X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0
 >Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 02:29:27 -0700
 >To: "Derek J. Balling" <dredd at megacity.org>
 >From: JC Dill <jcdill at vo.cnchost.com>
 >Subject: Re: Praise to XO's Security/Abuse
 >In-Reply-To: <F7DD5CF3-BC85-11D6-A43D-00039384A830 at megacity.org>
 >References: <Pine.LNX.4.41.0208302149180.3717-100000 at amethyst.nstc.com>
 >Mime-Version: 1.0
 >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
 >
 >On 07:04 PM 8/30/02, Derek J. Balling wrote:
 > >I don't show a listing at all for cnchost.com ... (or vo.cnchost.com,
 > >which we wouldn't list anyway).
 > >
 > >what hostname does your mail server's IP address in-addr to?
 >
 > cnchost runs off a server cluster, you can get different IP addresses
 >each time you query (or at least, you are supposed to), as it does
 >automatic load balancing.
<snip>