User Unknown (WAS: really amazon?)

Mon Aug 12 19:26:22 UTC 2019

On Sun, Aug 04, 2019 at 12:12:48AM -0700, Stephen Satchell wrote:
> "The rules" have been around for years, and are codified in the RFCs
> that are widely published and available to all at zero cost.  (That
> wasn't always true, as it wasn't until the DDN Protocol Handbook volumes
> were published in 1985 that the RFCs were available to everyone.  I seem
> to recall there was an FTP site that provided the RFC documents before
> that, but my memory is hazy on that.)

IIRC, the CSnet CIC provided an RFC-by-mail service in the mid to late 1980's.
It allowed anyone to request any RFC by number, e.g., sending it "rfc123" would
result in a response containing that RFC.  I also share your recollection of
an earlier FTP site but a few minutes of checking old documents hasn't turned
up its name and it's fallen out of long-term memory, at least for the moment.

> During my career as a web server admin, mail admin, and network admin, I
> followed "the rules" strictly.   As the main abuse contact during my
> time at a web hosting company, my postmaster@ and abuse@ contact
> addresses were according to Hoyle, and published with the company ASN,
> netblock, and domain registration records.

I've done the same -- imperfectly, to be sure, I've certainly tried.
Half my grump with Amazon here is that they have, for all practical
purposes, unlimited money and unlimited personnel.  They should be the
go-to example for How To Do It Right.  They should be the model (or one
of the models) that we're all trying to emulate, the gold standard that
we can all point to.

But they're not.

The other half of my grump is that they're enormous, and therefore capable
of inflicting enormous damage.  The larger an operation, the more critical
it is that abuse/security/et.al. be fully supported, highly responsive,
empowered to act decisively, etc.

But they're not.

And I have yet to see anyone from Amazon (a) admit this and (b) ask for help
fixing it.

---rsk