Jump to content

Complaining re. Earthlink's C/R spam Challenges


elvey

Recommended Posts

Ah, well. I tried. (It's funny when their customers get all flustered when I respond to challenges to spam I didn't send.) Hopefully they're smart enough to at least not intermingle the challenges with normal mail.

Then again, they can't spell 'cannot', so I doubt it...

Just sent to abuse[at]abuse.earthlink.net:

On 11/2/06 8:17 PM, EarthLink Abuse Department wrote:

> Hello,

>

>

> The email you reported is an automatic challenge by our SpamBlocker email filter. It is intended to prevent unsolicited emails from being received by our customers.

Yes, I know that.

> It is not spam or unsolicited, it's an automated response.

>

It's spam, it's unsolicited, and it's an automated response, actually.

> If you didn't send email to our customer, then your email address was used, probably fraudulently by a spammer to send UBE/UCE/unsolicited email.

That's what happened.

> EarthLink can not selectively block your domain from receiving the challenge/responses messages.

>

Since you refuse my request, your spam will be reported as spam to spamcop, per

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/14.html

>

> Regards,

>

>

> EarthLink, Inc.

> Network Abuse

> abuse[at]abuse.earthlink.net

> ====================================

>

>

> *ATTN: Earthlink administrator

>

> Do not send challenges to the domain domain.dom or it subdomains.

> domain.dom is frequently forged in the From: of spam, i.e. the subject of joe-job attacks.

> (NOTE: domain.dom was NOT thusly munged in the actual email to Earthlink.)

> If you ignore these instructions, your spam will be reported as spam to spamcop, per

> http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/14.html :

> *

>

> *"Messages which may be reported:...*

>

> 4. Misdirected challenges from challenge/response spam filtering systems"

>

> C/R is a BAD IDEA. STOP IT! *

> This includes

> From: <anything>[at]domain.dom

> including

> **From: <anything>[at]matthew.domain.dom

>

> Got it? *

>

>

>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, well. I tried. ...
You did indeed try elvey. Perhaps other victims of misdirected challenges and rejections might use your approach as something of a template in the ongoing battle to educate the superabundance of conveniently clueless admins.

I say "conveniently clueless" in the belief that the ISP's selection of policies and tools, even inappropriate ones, is ultimately a financial decision and any contrary pretense is , not to put too fine a point upon it, a lie. Their (perfectly valid) aim for is the cheapest possible solutions consistent with the attraction and retention of customers prepared to pay just a fraction more than the service is worth. Thus they are vulnerable, when the "worth" is reduced because the service has become less reliable (than that of similarly-priced competitors). IMO.

Corporate perpetrators (non-providers) are a different matter, genuinely rather than conveniently clueless and possibly less resistent to change when they "get it". Though we have seen the odd exception to *that* hopeful portrayal.

Well done. I note the link you provide them includes, in turn, a link to Why are auto responders bad? which is very good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks. Happy to have anyone use my msg as a template. I hereby GPLv3 it.

I'm sure I'm far, far from the first complainer; their response suggests that they are willfully ignorant, indeed.

They're much like 0spam:

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2527

and MailBlocks:

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=96 .

I just wanted to show/publicly document that someone's gone the extra mile in attempting to educate them first. I'm documenting for the record how/why Earthlink sucks. They refuse to be a good netizen - to stop knowingly sending spam in the form of bogus C/R Challenges. :(

(I've been getting Joe-jobbed far more than usual for the past month or so, so I'm getting lots of challenges from Earthlink.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At least Earthlink does not force its users to make use of the C/R system. By default it is turned off, but is one of the tools it does provide to its users.

By the way, Earthlink does happen to be my primary email provider and I use their spam filter prior to forwarding all my mail to my SpamCop account for further filtering.

I find that their phone tech support to be very bad, but their online chat tech support is fairly good. (Just my personal experiences incase anyone is interested.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...