It depends on what context you are referring to. Are you talking about abuse contact as a means to dispute abuse complaints? In that case, I'd say a form is better. An example is AT&T. When AT&T blocks our server, the bounce back message tells us to send an email to abuse_...@abuse-att.net. I'm sure abuse_...@abuse-att.net gets a TON of spam messages sent to it. So how are we supposed to ensure that our message gets through all the spam noise and to the eyes of someone that can make a difference? Do I use a Subject of "You are blocking me!" or "I'm blacklisted" or "Please look into this blacklist" or what do I use? What specific information do they want to investigate the dispute? Obviously the IP address, but what else?
For AT&T I basically have to send a message to abuse_...@abuse-att.net every day, sometimes for 2 weeks, before I finally get the attention of somebody. There's a slew of threads on AT&T Community forums about the on/off nature of responses from abuse_...@abuse-att.net. I can't help but wonder if they had a form on their website where you could dispute their listings. A website form can be sent to ANY email address, such that nobody really knows what email address it's sent to. For example, AT&T could have a form that when submitted sends to hsd9234hsdhf89sfh823g...@abuse-att.net - it's very, very unlikely that someone just randomly sends an email to hsd9234hsdhf89sfh823g...@abuse-att.net, so you know that every email coming into hsd9234hsdhf89sfh823g...@abuse-att.net was sent to you from that form. You can cover the form with various anti-spam and anti-bot measures you then GREATLY reduce the spam noise concerning would be listing disputes. (AT&T is just an example here, but serves to better illustrate how a form could be useful in this situation) If you're talking about Feedback Loops or otherwise automatically reporting spam - then email is probably better. Although you could also feed information to a callback URL (much like PayPal's Instant Payment Notification system) where the owner of the website would be responsible for collecting the information fed into it. A callback URL might have a benefit in that the entity doing the reporting wouldn't have to worry with bounce back messages to the abuse contact email address. Either way - I would think that the receiver of these abuse reports would want some way to distinguish between feedback loop reports or automatic spam reports (they don't really need a response, just action) and abuse messages that need an actual written response. On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 2:54 PM Jarland Donnell via mailop < mailop@mailop.org> wrote: > Some may see that as a good thing. It's the old Office Space scene where > one thing happens and the guy has multiple bosses come by and tell him > the same thing all day long. When I worked at a big cloud I'd catch a > spammer and terminate them, then I'd have to talk to 16 different people > over the next 30 days about it. Some see a clear path to abuse@ as kind > and easy, while others see it as a place to vomit every single piece of > trash they have to nuke it into oblivion. At least a form forces people > to be intentional and thoughtful. > > Most of us on this list would probably scratch our heads as to why > someone wouldn't want every single abuse complaint, but Linode and > DigitalOcean just see all of their massive barely educated self-hosting > Wordpress customers bombarding each other's abuse@ with endless piles of > piss, for example. Everyone has their burden, and it's an interesting > topic. Everything changes at scale. > > Personally, I'm fine with just the abuse@ route and my intention is to > automate as many inbound reports as possible as I scale, but more often > than not what I find when I hit various points of scale is that instead > of doing better than OtherCompany is that I find out why they did what > they do. > > On 2022-01-19 13:40, John Levine via mailop wrote: > > It appears that Grant Taylor via mailop <gtay...@tnetconsulting.net> > > said: > >> -=-=-=-=-=- > >> -=-=-=-=-=- > >> > >> On 1/19/22 2:54 AM, Alessandro Vesely via mailop wrote: > >>> I guess it is difficult to process, but I fail to understand how > >>> forms can ease that task, > >> > >> I think it comes down to unstructured vs structured data. Forms can > >> have fields for each pertinent piece of information thus applying > >> structure to the reports. > > > > You want structure, we have ARF and maybe XARF, which are delivered by > > e-mail and designed to be machine generated and machine parsed. The > > problem with forms is that they are not consistent and can't be > > automated and I have much better things to do with my time than to > > paste spam into other people's web forms. > > > > R's, > > John > > _______________________________________________ > > mailop mailing list > > mailop@mailop.org > > https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop > _______________________________________________ > mailop mailing list > mailop@mailop.org > https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop >
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