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Date:      Wed, 27 May 1998 02:18:46 -0400
From:      "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Blaine Minazzi <bminazzi@w3page.com>
Cc:        Greg Stringfellow <greg@prismnet.com>, isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SMTP Relay probing - Should I follow up - advice? 
Message-ID:  <5880.896249926@gjp.erols.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 26 May 1998 01:16:06 MDT." <356A6C36.25C841B5@w3page.com> 

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Blaine, please tone down your messages. The level of profanity you've been
using is not needed.

Blaine Minazzi wrote in message ID
<356A6C36.25C841B5@w3page.com>:
> It is the spammers, that I called fu*&king bandwidth theives.  The
> original subject is realying spam off of mail servers without
> permission.  That is theft of services, plain and simple.  I have sent
> numerous complaints to ALTER.NET, and have never seen an account
> cancelled, or any other action to show that ALTER.NET give a flying fox
> about anything other than $$$$.  They are no better than AGIS used to be
> when they were the home for Spamford Wallace and the like.

That is because alter.net does not sell dialup directly. They sell
them to resellers. While the reseller contract they use could probably
be beefed up a bit, if the reseller doesn't act UUNet is kinda stuck.
If UUNet blocks the account forcibly at the RADIUS level, the spammer
calls the reseller, the reseller puzzles over the account and gives
Joe Spammer a new one.

> If ALTER.NET customers were denied services on a fairly widespread
> basis, how long do you think they would tolerate spammers?   

You try explaining to a large customerbase why they can't get to
UUNet and then see how your revenues are next month. I know at the
place I work at it would be suicide. Not because we are small.
Exactly the opposite actually.

> Putting pressure on the wallet is usually a fairly effective tactic.  Do
> you think that AGIS had some sort of religious conversion?  I doubt it. 
> I think the pressure of the internet community as a whole, and the
> outright hassle they went through because of their spam policies caused
> them to make a decision based on economic realities that hosting these
> assholes was downright bad for business.

AGISs policy was almost certainly influenced by dedicated line customers
leaving. *NOT* by outside people blocking their entire netblocks. I know
a company who had ppl phoning up for accounts, asking who they used
as their upstream, they answered `Agis' and then got dialtone as feedback
from the prospective customer. They had to leave Agis for economic
reasons. That is the correct course of action to take, not denying your
own customer base service (no matter how right you feel your cause
is, if customers can't get to their favourite web site, they will
cancel...)

Gary
--
Gary Palmer                                          FreeBSD Core Team Member
FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info



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