[epub] Re: news.admin.net-abuse.sightings and spammer databases

[epub]

At 11:37 AM 9/10/03, you wrote:
> Can anyone provide some insight into the listings in the Google group
> news.admin.net-abuse.sightings?

First, it's a newsgroup. Most ISP's allow you to read newsgroups locally. 
Google just offers an interface to read and post to newsgroups.

> My understanding is that people can
> forward emails to the group that they consider to be spam, though the
> veracity of the claims is not verified just because messages appear in
> the group. Right so far?

That's true with ANY reports of Spam. It's always in the eye of the 
recipient as to whether it constitutes Spam or not.

> What really confuses me is the following. I've been testing email
> service providers. EZezine, which is small but seems very well run, had
> no spam reports in news.admin.net-abuse.sightings. During my tests using
> Ezezine's service, I was completely unable to send to AOL. Subsequently,
> EZezine has publicly announced major issues with filtering in general,
> to the point where it sounds like their business is threatened.

I'm not familiar with their service. To be honest, we've experienced 
problems with AOL delivery in the past on one of our platforms. AOL has 
become very helpful with mailing list hosting companies in recent months in 
making sure that legitimate email does get through.

Because a service doesn't show up in the abuse newsgroup or elsewhere does 
not have any relevance on AOL blocking it. AOL maintains their own block 
lists based on companies that do not adhere to their policies laid out at 
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/. They will also whitelist and set up a 
feedback loop for companies that make the effort.

There are two basic reasons that email doesn't get through to AOL. The 
first is that they have blacklisted the sender based on user complaints. 
The second is that the mailing list company and/or the owner is not 
removing invalid addresses from their list. I don't know exactly how it 
works right now (AOL seems to continue to modify this), but if there are an 
excessive number of invalid emails being generated from one source, AOL 
will just drop additional emails from that source.

> NetAtlantic, a larger, more multi-faceted list/email/hosting service
> provider, has MANY listings in news.admin.net-abuse.sightings. Yet my
> initial tests show no filtering problems when NetAtlantic tries to send
> mail to AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail accounts. This would seem to give the
> reports in news.admin.net-abuse.sightings little value as a predictor of
> a company's ability to deliver emails without getting filtered.

It's probably a matter of volume. The more email sent from one source, the 
more likely there are to be people that abuse the service. Most ISPs, when 
it comes to blocking, are more concerned that mailing list hosting 
companies are pro-active when it comes to minimizing the possibilities for 
spam to come their system and reactive in taking action against spammers 
that slip through the cracks.

> I also looked up the two companies in three IP/spammers databases.
> EZEzine was listed once in two of the databases and four times in the
> other. Ditto for NetAtlantic. Neither was listed in Spamhaus or Spamcop.
> So again, I don't see how these tools are useful predictors of whether a
> company will be able to deliver the mail.

They really aren't. Many of the smaller blacklists (and some of the larger 
ones in the past) will list IPs based on one complaint and not remove the 
offending IP even if action has been taken. Other blacklists will list an 
entire quadrant (the last set of digits in an IP) because of one spammer.

One of the things to also consider is that listings today are not a 
predictor of what will happen tomorrow. For instance, there was one decent 
sized mailing list hosting company that ran a clean ship. They would 
pre-screen clients and cancel accounts if anyone slipped through the 
cracks. Literally overnight, they got more lax in their policies. In a 
matter of a couple of weeks, all of a sudden, their non-spamming clients 
had difficulty getting mail through to most large ISPs because of this 
change in policy.

I feel pretty confident with our own pre-screening policies. However, about 
18 months ago, we had one spammer slip through the cracks. About 10,000 
emails went out before we were able to pull the plug. We ended up having to 
get the primary IP address changed for that specific server.

Sharon Tucci
http://www.ListCast.com 



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