Attn MCI/UUNet - Massive abuse from your network

Tue Jun 29 20:15:25 UTC 2004

 From Ben Browning, received 29/6/04, 9:56 am -0700 (GMT):
>  Steve Linford wrote:
>>  The statement by Ben Browning: "I know several businesses who have,
>>  and a great many people who have blocked UUNet space from sending
>>  them email ... by using ... the SBL" is false, the SBL has never
>>  blocked UUNet/MCI IP space that wasn't directly in the control of
>>  spammers. If Mr Browning does indeed know "several businesses and a
>>  great many people" whose UUNet/MCI IP space has been blocked by the
>>  SBL, then Mr Browning knows several spam outfits and a great many
>>  spammers.
>
>  Let me rephrase: I know several businesses and a great many people who
>  block *parts* of UUNet by the SBL and *larger* parts of it by means
>  of SPEWS, blackholes.us, et al.

I obviously read more into it than you meant, sorry (I though you 
were implying we were blocking MCI IPs above and in addition to IPs 
belonging to spammers, something we try hard not to do).

>  Regardless, the SBL does block *some* UUNet space, much of
>  which(according to responses here) no longer belongs to the
>  spammers.

That's correct. At a guess I'd say possibly even 20% of our MCI 
listings are stale, and we don't know which ones. Without illegally 
scanning the MCI IPs to see what's running there we have very little 
way of knowing which spammers are departed or not, because MCI/UUNet 
Abuse will not tell us.

Unlike listings of normal providers which tend to manage themselves, 
MCI SBL listings continue to grow in number and are removed either 
because they've reached their time-out setting or because someone 
higher up yells and the Abuse guys get their fingers out. We see 
things start to happen when Christopher Morrow gets involved, but 
they soon revert if he's not chasing them. Vint Cerf is now aware of 
the situation so perhaps more might begin to move and we may soon see 
those MCI listings drop down, and maybe a refresh of MCI's AUP 
enforcement.

Thanks for voicing your opinion with MCI.

-- 
   Steve Linford
   The Spamhaus Project
   http://www.spamhaus.org