Do ISPs terminate their SPAMing IP addresses?

[SteveM]

I've been using SpamCop for a while now and have started, every once in a while, looking at the history of some SPAMing IP addresses. Quite often I find ISPs such as Comcast with IP addresses that have been SPAMing for HUNDREDS of days. Knowing that SpamCop sends Comcast (and others) spam notifications, I would think that these ISPs would terminate the SPAMers accounts. It seems that they could care less. History reports show spam from those IP addresses going back for months or more.

Anybody know what the big ISPs such as Comcast, Pacbell, Shawcable, etc., do with spam reports to their abuse e-mail address? It's starting to seem like a BIG waste of time for me to report spam.

[turetzsr]

...Nope, there's no way for us to know.

...You may wish to move to an e-mail service provider that uses IP-based blocklists to reject or tag spam, so that your reporting can do you some good!

[Wazoo]

From this end (just another user), it's just as SteveT stated. Some ISPs have created their reputation .. for instance Comcast's abuse e-mail address bouncing due to running over its 6Gig of allocated space (.. not once, not twice, but several times) kind of has its implications. Others have a checkered storyline, sometimes whacking things pretty quick, sometimes crap seems to go on forever. Some of them regularly post in NANAE.

You also need to remember that although one ISP is the reporting address of record for a particular IP address/range, the real computer spewing stuff is the cutomer of a customer scenario, so there are some "politics" involved at times. For example, the ISP I send my money to is very quick to react to my notifications (though noting that I've personally talked to most of the abuse staff, and when I call about some other issue, you can hear the tier1 person's face go pale when they pull up my account record .. almost an immediate escalation <g> in most cases) ... However, they fall under the reporting block of AT&T, now ensnared in the Comcast merge/buyout/whatever ... and stories go that it can be like two weeks before a complaint sent to the AT&T abuse address actually makes it's way to the "right" abuse desk.

And of course, one can also go with that an IP spewing this week might be shut down, user spanked, etc. .... but a week later, that IP gets dynamically assigned to yet another user that is also trojan'd / compromised .... the particular spam spew will probably change, the same address pops up, but in reality, it is a "new" source of spew.