FW: The worst abuse e-mail ever, sverige.net

Wed Sep 22 17:52:57 UTC 2004

I don't want to add to this bash-fest, but maybe a little context and a laugh helps... the original posting sounds like utter frustration, something I'm sure a few people are familiar with if you've ever worked for a bunch of sociopathic conartists using their service provider business to steal from people in order to support their prostitution/drug/gambling habit and/or perpetuation of their cult... Like my previous employer.  If you work for someone who allows you to subject sales to any sort of screening, like asking "Is your mail server RFC2505 compliant?", luckily you aren't working for clowns who would sell to anyone (and actually say things like "spammers are a great sales channel!"), refer to themselves as "pirates of telecommunications" (seriously), and refuse to support any implementation of known good technical practices if it A) costs > 0.01 or B) inconveniences any spammer (I mean, customer.)  And the aftermath of not implementing reasonable technical practices, is of course, all your fault (like all of your superblocks being RBLed for consistently selling service to notorious spammers)... People who treat their engineers with utter disdain and contempt, as if they are just a sinkhole for their sales dollars.

Luckily for me, I could just walk away and hand them my two word resignation letter (thats right:  FO).  Not everyone can, esp during the recession.  I'm just posting this because if you have never worked in these conditions, its hard to comprehend the frustration level, I certainly didn't before experiencing it myself.  And maybe we should find ways of putting scourge like this out of business.

glad to be back from the dark side, working for a real company again...

Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at mail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 10:37 AM
To: Lars-Johan Liman
Cc: nanog
Subject: Re: FW: The worst abuse e-mail ever, sverige.net

At 10:16 AM +0200 9/22/04, Lars-Johan Liman wrote:
>I cannot agree to the "block port 25" line of action.

You block port 25 until a customer says that they're claim to have
setup a responsible mail submission agent and demonstrate the
necessary clue density.

This can be readily determined by having customer support mail
a short form with relevant questions such as "Is your mail server
RFC2505 compliant?", "Please list the mechanism used to secure
mail submission to your server?", and "Are you prepared to handle
SPAM reports for all email originated or relayed?"   No problem for
someone who knows what they're doing but enough to deter the
random end user.

/John