Lazy network operators

Mon Apr 12 16:31:59 UTC 2004

Chris Boyd wrote:

> NTL World no longer accepts abuse@ email.  You have to go to a web form 
> that requires javascript be enabled and enter all of the information for 
> them.  I guess that they got tired of processing the the abuse@ mail 
> load and just bit bucketed it.

I'm late on this thread and I don't want to open a can of worms here, but...

I can understand the reasoning behind what they are doing, but perhaps 
they are taking things in the wrong direction.  Our abuse@ email address 
is just that, abused.  Our abuse@ mailbox gets probably 500+ spams a day 
with maybe 2-3 legit emails that we need to look at.  Sure we could run 
anti-spam measures on the abuse@ address but that probably isn't the way 
to go since most complaints to abuse@ are forward spam messages which 
could be marked and then missed.

I think making a reporting page that requires jscript and such is a 
little over the top, but I don't think a simple HTML standard web form 
is out of the question.  We've not gone this route yet, but we may head 
that way since I think the actual legit concerns of our abuse@ address 
are getting lost in the fray.  Having our techs/engineers go through the 
abuse@ box every day to play hide and seek is a bit of an agonizing task 
that nobody really wants, especially at the volume it is today.  If 
there was a standard that worked for this, we would certainly follow it. 
  As it is today, we have got to find something simple that works for 
the legit issues and something that doesn't burn up so many 
engineer/tech cycles.

-- 
Robert Blayzor, BOFH
INOC, LLC
rblayzor at inoc.net
PGP: http://www.inoc.net/~dev/
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