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On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 12:37:49AM -0600, Thomas Charron wrote:
as I understand your logic above you are saying that its OK to punish anyone who is in close proximity to lawbreakers as long as your doing it to punish
lawbreakers?
Since when is forcing an SMTP server to accept your mail a punishment?
Tom, you're on the wrong train. You have it backward. It's the broadband users who want to run their own services that are being punished.
No, you aren't being punished. When you signed up for residential broadband, you agreed to not run servers. I understand, you say you're trying to make SMTP connections to other machines. Yes, you can do this without actually running a MTA in daemon mode.
Yes, it sucks for you that AOL is blocking IPs on "known dial-up lists," but they have no choice. AOL cannot block individual IPs, they must block ranges from the lists. Why? Because IPs on dialup lists are not guaranteed to be static. The Comcast admins may have set their DHCP to always send your cable modem the same IP because it is often easier to configure this way. However, there's no guarantee you'll always get that IP address. An admin could sit down at a console and change their IP scheme in 5 minutes.
So, faced with the fact that AOL gets spam potentially costing them and their customers millions of dollars a day from a block of IPs that could be (and quite probably are) dynamically allocated, what are they to do? If they don't want to hemmorhage money and lose customers in droves (which they do anyway, but that's another topic altogether), they must block all of those IPs. They can't just selectively block the ones that are sending the spam, because there is no guarantee that those IPs will always be the same. These IPs could, and with most ISPs (Verizon DSL does this) they do, often change.
As someone that has had to deal with spam on a daily basis (I helped admin the mail server for the College of Engineering at the University of KY), I understand completely where AOL is coming from on this, and if I were in their shoes, I'd most definitely do the same thing.
hmmmm - No - this definitely doesn't pass my sniff test. By your logic its ok to fine or put in jail anyone who lives next to drug dealers or
Again, you're not being put in jail.
So what? I'm still being restricted without having done anything to deserve it... It's still a punishment.
It's not a punishment. It's a business decision. AOL decided that they can't afford to filter spam from this IP block, so they simply block them all. It makes perfect sense.
You do have choices. You can switch to DSL with an ISP who will allow you to run servers, and whose IPs are not on a blaclist or a dialup list. Then you can connect directly to AOL's SMTP servers and spam them all you like. If you can't get DSL where you live, then you can move. You could also pay for a T1. You could use your ISP's mail server. You have plenty of choices, though not all of them may be viable depending on your circumstances.
They're saying, "I don't want you calling me". Tell me.. Anyone here have a caller ID block on unknown numbers?
Woah. Wrong. They're saying, "I don't want you calling anyone I provide service to." Since when is it OK for the phone company to block calls from telemarketers? You've missed the boat here too. Caller ID blocking is fine, as it represents the individual making a choice whether or not to receive those calls. It is NOT ok for the service provider to make those decisions on behalf of all its customers.
Actually, phone companies may have that right. They've never tried it.
Fact is, though, we aren't talking about phone service, we're talking about email. After all, I'm free not to answer my phone, and when I don't the phone company's cost of that call is practically nil. If AOL has to accept spam from evey open relay on the net, then there is a definite economic cost in bandwidth, disk space, and aministrator overhead. Most undelieverable messages have to be manually removed from the queue. At U.K., we'd spend a couple hours a week doing this for a mail server with 6,000 users. I imagine it's a full time job for a dozen or so people at AOL with several million customers.
You still can (and should) use your ISP's SMTP server to send mail to AOL customers. You can still mail them if you want to, so what if you can't do it in your preferred manner. You aren't being punished. Your choices are being limited. When you signed up with Comcast, you pretty much agreed to those limits.
Oh my GOD man. They rejected your SMTP email. Shesh. Since the protocol has no built in method of authentication, this is the best they can do. You can either eat spam, or do something like this.
Or you can go after the spammers. Which is the only right way to go about the problem. Make spamming not worth the potential gains. Fine the bastards for every spam sent.
I'm not even going to touch this. There are actually more effective solutions. Law enforcement solutions are reactionary and generally counterproductive. It's better to just block IPs and work on improving spam filter software. Better user education is also required to help people identify and ignore spam.
You know.. The same reason why some here always include their PGP signature to validate identiy?
No, very different. The latter is to provide information for those who may want it. The former is to block communications from an entire class of people just because it *might* be unwanted.
Well, most people I know use a PGP signature block as a prophylactic measure. It's intended to prevent people from forging their return address. If someone always signs their outgoing mail, and you receive a mail for them advertising the latest Britney Spears photoshopped nudes that isn't signed or the signature doesn't match their key, then chances are the mail was spoofed. We've already had a discussion on why PGP signatures don't really provide this level of proof (check the archives), but still that's how many people use it. Signatures are really only valid to "prove" that you actually did send this particular message, they can't be used to prove that you didn't send another
message.
As for AOL restricting their user's rights because they might want to get mail from these IPs, I don't think many of their users are aware of this practice, nor would they care. If they did become aware of it, and complained, I think the vast majority would go along with it, once they realized that it is actually saving AOL, and therefore themselves, money. (See above if you need a refresher on the reasoning behind this move.)
Every ISP, and that includes business and academic institutions, has the right (actually the obligation) to monitor what goes in and out of their networks. They have the right to refuse connections on any basis that meets their needs. One could very well argue that when you connect to their SMTP server to send mail, you are using their equipment. They have the right to control who uses their equipment and services and how those equipment and services are used. They could quite possibly get in legal trouble if they don't block these IP addresses. If mail gets through that does damage to one of their customer's computers, or if the company goes bankrupt because of the cost of accepting all this spam, they could very easily be sued by customers or share holders for not doing due dilligence in running the company according to industry accepted practice. (I think you'll find most ISPs block your IP, not just AOL.) Along with rights come another set of things called responsibilities. AOL is legally responsible for what gets stored on their computers. ISPs do not yet enjoy common carrier status, and they probably never will.
In a "free" society, we are not free to do as we chose. Our rights must be balanced against the rights of others. In this case, I think a good balance has been struck. AOL has maintained the right to reasonably control their network and attempt to keep costs in line with their business needs. You still have the right to send email to AOL customers, you have plenty of options.
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